UC-NRLF 


B    3    373    S5M 


kS: 


1 


AN    OUTLINE  OF  THE  HISTORY    OF 
CHRISTIAN   THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT 


STUDIES   IN  THEOLOGY 

12mo,  cloth.     75  cents  net  per  vol. 


NOW  READY 
A  Critical  Introduction  to  the  New  Testament 

By  Arthur  Samuel  Peake,  D.D. 
Faith  and  Its  Psychology 

By  the  Rev.  William  R.  Inge,  D.D. 
Philosophy  and  Religion 

By  the  Rev.  Hastings  Rashdall,  D.Litt.   (Oxon), 
D.C.L.  (Durham),  F.B.A. 

Revelation  and  Inspiration 

By  the  Rev.  James  Orr,  D.D. 
Christianity  and  Social  Questions 

By  the  Ven.  W.  Cunningham,  F.B.A.,  D.D.,  D.Sc. 
Christian  Thought  to  the  Reformation 

By  Herbert  B.  Workman,  D.Litt. 
Protestant  Thought  Before  Kant 

By  A.  C.  McGiFFERT,  Ph.D.,  D.D. 

An   Outline   of   the   History   of   Christian   Thought 
Since  Kant 
By  Edward  Caldwell  Moore,  D.D. 

The  Christian   Hope:    A  Study   in  the  Doctrine  of 
Immortality 

By  William  Adams  Brown,  Ph.D..  D.D. 

IN  PREPARATION 
Redemption  and  Atonement 

By  the  Right  Rev.  the  Bishop  of  Gloucester 
A  Critical  Introduction  to  the  Old  Testament 

By  the  Rev.  George  Buchanan  Gray,  D.D.,  D.Litt. 


AN    OUTLINE    OF   THE 

HISTORY    OF    CHRISTIAN 
THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT 


BY 

EDWARD    CALDWELL    MOORE 

PARKMAN   PROFESSOR   OF   THEOLOGY   IN    HARVARD   UNIVERSITY 


NEW  YORK 
CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S    SONS 

1912 


Ml 


TO 

ADOLF    HARNACK 

ON   HIS   SIXTIETH    BIRTHDAY 
BY  HIS    FIRST   AMERICAN   PUPIL 


248003 


PREFATORY    NOTE 

It  is  hoped  that  this  book  may  serve  as  an  outHne  for  a 
larger  work,  in  which  the  judgments  here  expressed  may  be 
supported  in  detail.  Especially,  the  author  desires  to  treat 
the  literature  of  the  social  question  and  of  the  modernist 
movement  with  a  fulness  which  has  not  been  possible  within 
the  limits  of  this  sketch.  The  philosophy  of  religion  and 
the  history  of  religions  should  have  place,  as  also  that 
estimate  of  the  essence  of  Christianity  which  is  suggested 
by  the  contact  of  Christianity  with  the  living  religions  of 
the  Orient. 

Pasque  Island,  Mass., 
July  28,  1911. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  I 


A.— Introduction,  .            ,            .            .            , 

PAOS 
1 

B.— The  Background,       .... 

.       23 

DEISM,    ..,.•. 

.       23 

RATIONALISM,                 .... 

.       25 

PIETISM,            ..... 

.       30 

ESTHETIC   IDEALISM, 

.      33 

CHAPTER  II 

Idealistic  Philosophy,     .... 

.      39 

KANT,               ..... 

.      39 

FICHTE,              ..... 

.      56 

SCHELLING,     ..... 

.      60 

HEGEL, 

.      66 

CHAPTER  III 

Theological  Reconstruction,     . 
schleiermacher,     . 
ritschl  and  the  ritschlians. 


74 

74 
89 


CHAPTER  IV 

The  Critical  and  Historical  Movement, 

.     110 

STRAUSS,             ..... 

.     114 

BAUR,                   ..... 

.     118 

the  canon,    ...,., 

.     123 

THE    LIFE    OF   JESUS,  .                  .                 .                  .                 . 

.     127 

THE    OLD    TESTAMENT,                 .                 .                 .                 . 

.     130 

THE   HISTORY   OF   DOCTRINE,. 

.     136 

HARNACK,          ...... 

.     140 

HISTOKY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT 


CHAPTER  V 

The  Contribution  of  the  Sciences, 
positivism,  . 

naturalism  and  agnosticism, 
evolution, 
miracles,    . 
the  social  sciences, 


CHAPTER  VI 


The  English-speaking  Peoples 
THE  poets,  . 

COLERIDGE, 

THE   ORIEL   SCHOOL, 

ERSKINE   AND    CAMPBELL, 

MAURICE,       . 

CHANNING,    . 

BUSHNELL,    I 

THE   CATHOLIC    REVIVAL, 

THE   OXFORD    MOVEMENT, 

NEWMAN, 

MODERNISM,  . 

ROBERTSON,  . 

PHILLIPS   BROOKS, 

THE    BROAD    CHURCH, 

CARLYLE,       . 

EMERSON,      , 

ARNOLD, 

MARTINEAU, 

JAMES, 

Bibliography, 
Index,       , 


Action  and  Reaction, 


AN    OUTLINE   OF  THE   HISTORY    OP 
CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT 


AN  OUTLINE  OF  THE  HISTORY  OF 
CHRISTIAN   THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT 

CHAPTER  I 
A. — Introduction 

The  Protestant  Reformation  marked  an  era  both  in  life  and 
thought  for  the  modern  world.  It  ushered  in  a  revolution 
in  Europe.  It  established  distinctions  and  initiated  ten- 
dencies which  are  still  significant.  These  distinctions  have 
been  significant  not  for  Europe  alone.  They  have  had  in- 
fluence also  upon  those  continents  which  since  the  Refor- 
mation have  come  under  the  dominion  of  Europeans.  Yet 
few  would  now  regard  the  Reformation  as  epoch-making 
in  the  sense  in  which  that  pre-eminence  has  been  claimed. 
No  one  now  esteems  that  it  separates  the  modem  from  the 
mediaeval  and  ancient  world  in  the  manner  once  supposed. 
The  perspective  of  history  makes  it  evident  that  large  areas 
of  life  and  thought  remained  then  untouched  by  the  new 
spirit.  Assumptions  which  had  their  origin  in  feudal  or  even 
in  classical  culture  continued  unquestioned.  More  than  this, 
impulses  in  rational  life  and  in  the  interpretation  of  religion, 
which  showed  themselves  wdth  clearness  in  one  and  another 
of  the  reformers  themselves,  were  lost  sight  of,  if  not  actually 
repudiated,  by  their  successors.  It  is  possible  to  view  many 
things  in  the  intellectual  and  religious  life  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  even  some  which  Protestants  have  passionately  re- 
probated, as  but  the  taking  up  again  of  clues  which  the 
reformers  had  let  fall,  the  carrying  out  of  purposes  of  their 
movement  which  were  partly  hidden  from  themselves. 

A 


2        HISTOil^  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

Men  have  asserted  tha^t  the  Renaissance  inaugurated  a 
period  of  paganism.  They  have  gloried  that  there  super- 
vened upon  this  paganism  the  rehgious  revival  which  the 
Reformation  was.  Even  these  men  will,  however,  not  deny 
that  it  was  the  intellectual  rejuvenation  which  made  the 
religious  reformation  possible  or,  at  all  events,  effective. 
Nor  can  it  be  denied  that  after  the  Reformation,  in  the  Pro- 
testant communions  the  intellectual  element  was  thrust  into 
the  background.  The  practical  and  devotional  prevailed. 
Humanism  was  for  a  time  shut  out.  There  was  more  room 
for  it  in  the  Roman  Church  than  among  Protestants.  Again, 
the  Renaissance  itself  had  been  not  so  much  an  era  of  dis- 
covery of  a  new  intellectual  and  spiritual  world.  It  had  been, 
rather,  the  rediscovery  of  valid  principles  of  life  in  an  ancient 
culture  and  civilisation.  That  thorough-going  review  of  the 
principles  at  the  basis  of  all  relations  of  the  life  of  man, 
which  once  seemed  possible  to  Renaissance  and  Reformation, 
was  postponed  to  a  much  later  date.  When  it  did  take  place, 
it  was  under  far  different  auspices. 

There  is  a  remarkable  unity  in  the  history  of  Protestant 
thought  in  the  period  from  the  Reformation  to  the  end  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  There  is  a  still  more  surprising  unity 
of  Protestant  thought  in  this  period  with  the  thought  of  the 
mediaeval  and  ancient  Church.  The  basis  and  methods  are 
the  same.  Upon  many  points  the  conclusions  are  identical. 
There  was  nothing  of  which  the  Protestant  scholastics  were 
more  proud  than  of  their  agreement  with  the  Fathers  of  the 
early  Churph.  They  did  not  perceive  in  how  large  degree 
they  were  at  one  with  Christian  thinkers  of  the  Roman 
communion  as  well.  Few  seem  to  have  realised  how  largely 
Catholic  in  principle  Protestant  thought  has  been.  The 
fundamental  principles  at  the  basis  of  the  reasoning  have 
been  the  same.  The  notions  of  revelation  and  inspiration 
were  identical.  The  idea  of  authority  was  common  to  both, 
only  the  instance  in  which  that  authority  is  lodged  was 
different.  The  thoughts  of  God  and  man,  of  the  world,  of 
creation,  of  providence  and  prayer,  of  the  nature  and  means 
of  salvation,  are  similar.     Newman  was  right  in  discovering 


L]  INTRODUCTION  3 

that  from  the  first  he  had  thought,  only  and  always,  in 
what  he  called  Catholic  terms.  It  was  veiled  from  him  that 
many  of  those  who  ardently  opposed  him  thought  in  those 
same  terms. 

It  is  impossible  to  write  upon  the  theme  which  this  book 
sets  itself  without  using  the  terms  Catholic  and  Protestant  in 
the  conventional  sense.  The  words  stand  for  certain  historic 
magnitudes.  It  is  equally  impossible  to  conceal  from  our- 
selves how  misleading  the  language  often  is.  The  line  between 
that  which  has  been  happily  called  the  religion  of  authority  and 
the  religion  of  the  spirit  does  not  run  between  Catholic  and 
Protestant.  It  runs  through  the  middle  of  many  Protestant 
bodies,  through  the  border  only  of  some,  and  who  will  say 
that  the  Roman  Church  knows  nothing  of  this  contrast  ? 
The  sole  use  of  recurrence  here  to  the  historic  distinction  is 
to  emphasise  the  fact  that  this  distinction  stands  for  less 
than  has  commonly  been  supposed.  In  a  large  way  the 
history  of  Christian  thought,  from  earliest  times  to  the  end 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  presents  a  very  striking  unity. 

In  contrast  with  this,  that  modern  reflection  which  has 
taken  the  phenomenon  known  as  religion  and,  specifically, 
that  historic  form  of  religion  knowTi  as  Christianity,  as  its 
object,  has  indeed  also  slowly  revealed  the  fact  that  it  is  in 
possession  of  certain  principles.  Furthermore,  these  prin- 
ciples, as  they  have  emerged,  have  been  felt  to  be  new  and 
distinctive  principles.  They  are  essentially  modern  prin- 
ciples. They  are  the  principles  which,  taken  together, 
differentiate  the  thinker  of  the  nineteenth  century  from  all 
who  have  ever  been  before  him.  They  are  principles  which 
unite  all  thinkers  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  and  the 
beginning  of  the  twentieth  centuries,  in  practically  every 
portion  of  the  world,  as  they  think  of  all  subjects  except 
religion.  It  comes  more  and  more  to  be  felt  that  these 
principles  must  be  reckoned  with  in  our  thought  concerning 
religion  as  well. 

One  of  these  principles  is,  for  example,  that  of  dealing  in 
true  critical  fashion  with  problems  of  history  and  literature. 
Long  before  the  end  of  the  age  of  rationalism,  this  principle 


4        HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

had  been  applied  to  literature  and  history,  other  than 
those  called  sacred.  The  thorough-going  application  of  this 
scientific  method  to  the  literatures  and  history  of  the  Old 
and  New  Testaments  is  almost  wholly  an  achievement  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  It  has  completely  altered  the  view  of 
revelation  and  inspiration.  The  altered  view  of  the  nature 
of  the  documents  of  revelation  has  had  immeasurable  conse- 
quences for  dogma. 

Another  of  these  elements  is  the  new  view  of  nature  and 
of  man's  relation  to  nature.  Certain  notable  discoveries  in 
physics  and  astronomy  had  proved  possible  of  combination 
with  traditional  religion,  as  in  the  case  of  Newton.  Or  again, 
they  had  proved  impossible  of  combination  with  any  religion, 
as  in  the  case  of  Laplace.  The  review  of  the  religious  and 
Christian  problem  in  the  light  of  the  ever-increasing  volume 
of  scientific  discoveries — this  is  the  new  thing  in  the  period 
which  we  have  undertaken  to  describe.  A  theory  of  nature 
as  a  totality,  in  which  man,  not  merely  as  physical,  but  even 
also  as  social  and  moral  and  religious  being,  has  place  in  a 
series  which  suggests  no  break,  has  affected  the  doctrines  of 
God  and  of  man  in  a  way  which  neither  those  who  revered 
nor  those  who  repudiated  religion,  at  the  beginning  of  the 
nineteenth  century  could  have  imagined. 

Another  leading  principle  grows  out  of  Kant's  distinction 
of  two  worlds  and  two  orders  of  reason.  That  distinction 
issued  in  a  new  theory  of  knowledge.  It  laid  a  new  foun- 
dation for  an  idealistic  construing  of  the  universe.  In  one 
way  it  was  the  answer  of  a  profoundly  religious  nature  to  the 
triviality  and  effrontery  into  which  the  great  rationalistic 
movement  had  run  out.  By  it  the  philosopher  gave  standing 
forever  to  much  that  pietists  and  mystics  in  every  age  had 
felt  to  be  true,  yet  had  never  been  able  to  prove  by  any 
method  which  the  ordered  reasoning  of  man  had  provided. 
Religion  as  feeling  regained  its  place.  Ethics  was  set  once 
more  in  the  light  of  the  eternal.  The  soul  of  man  became 
the  object  of  a  scientific  study. 

There  have  been  thus  indicated  three,  at  least,  of  the  larger 
factors  which  enter  into  an  interpretation   of   Christianity 


L)  INTRODUCTION  6 

which  may  fairly  be  said  to  be  new  in  the  nineteenth  century. 
They  are  new  in  a  sense  in  which  the  intellectual  elements 
entering  into  the  reconsideration  of  Christianity  in  the  age 
of  the  Reformation  were  not  new.  They  are  characteristic 
of  the  nineteenth  century.  They  would  naturally  issue 
in  an  interpretation  of  Christianity  in  the  general  context  of 
the  life  and  thought  of  that  century.  The  philosophical 
revolution  inaugurated  by  Kant,  with  the  general  drift  toward 
monism  in  the  interpretation  of  the  universe,  separates  from 
their  forebears  men  who  have  lived  since  Kant,  by  a  greater 
interval  than  that  which  divided  Kant  from  Plato.  The  ,J> 
evolutionary  view  of  nature,  as  developed  from  Schelling 
and  Comte  through  Darwin  to  Bergson,  divides  men  now 
Uving  from  the  contemporaries  of  Kant  in  his  youthful  studies 
of  nature,  as  those  men  were  not  divided  from  the  followers 
of  Aristotle. 

Of  purpose,  the  phrase  Christian  thought  has  been  inter^ 
preted  as  thought  concerning  Christianity.  The  problem 
which  this  book  essays  is  that  of  an  outline  of  the  history 
of  jthe  thought  which  has  been  devoted,  during  this  period 
of  marvellous  progress,  to  that  particular  object  in  conscious- 
ness and  history  which  is  known  as  Christianity.  Christi- 
anity, as  object  of  the  philosophical,  critical,  and  scientific 
reflection  of  the  age — this  it  is  which  we  propose  to  consider. 
Our  rehgion  as  affected  in  its  interpretation  by  principles 
of  thought  which  are  already  widespread,  and  bid  fair  to 
become  universal  among  educated  men — this  it  is  which 
in  this  little  volume  we  aim  to  discuss.  The  term  rehgious 
thought  has  not  always  had  this  significance.  Philosophy 
of  religion  has  signified,  often,  a  philosophising  of  which 
religion  was,  so  to  say,  the  atmosphere.  We  cannot  wonder 
if,  in  these  circumstances,  to  the  minds  of  some,  the  atmo- 
sphere has  seemed  to  hinder  clearness  of  vision.  The  whole 
subject  of  the  philosophy  of  religion  has  wdthin  the  last  few 
decades  undergone  a  revival,  since  it  has  been  accepted  that 
the  aim  is  not  to  philosophise  upon  things  in  general  in  a 
rehgious  spirit.  On  the  contrary,  the  aim  is  to  consider 
rehgion  itself,  with  the  best  aid  which  current  philosophy 


6        HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

and  science  afford.  In  this  sense  only  can  we  give  the  study 
of  reUgion  and  Christianity  a  place  among  the  sciences. 

It  remains  true,  now  as  always,  that  the  majority,  at  all 
events,  of  those  who  have  thought  profoundly  concerning 
Christianity  will  be  found  to  have  been  Christian  men. 
Religion  is  a  form  of  consciousness.  It  will  be  those  who 
have  had  experience  to  which  that  consciousness  corresponds, 
whose  judgments  can  be  supposed  to  have  weight.  That 
remark  is  true,  for  example,  of  aesthetic  matters  as  well. 
To  be  a  good  judge  of  music  one  must  have  musical  feeling 
and  experience.  To  speak  with  any  deeper  reasonableness 
concerning  faith,  one  must  have  faith.  To  think  profoundly 
concerning  Christianity  one  needs  to  have  had  the  Christian 
experience.  But  this  is  very  different  from  saying  that  to 
speak  worthily  of  the  Christian  religion,  one  must  needs  have 
made  his  own  the  statements  of  religion  which  men  of  a  former 
generation  may  have  found  serviceable.  The  distinction 
between  religion  itself,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  expres- 
sion of  religion  in  doctrines  and  rites,  or  the  application 
of  religion  through  institutions,  on  the  other  hand,  is 
in  itself  one  of  the  great  achievements  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  It  is  one  which  separates  us  from  Christian  men 
in  previous  centuries  as  markedly  as  does  any  other.  It  is 
a  simple  implication  of  the  Kantian  theory  of  knowledge. 
The  evidence  for  its  validity  has  come  through  the  appli- 
cation of  historical  criticism  to  all  the  creeds.  Mystics  of 
all  ages  have  seen  the  truth  from  far.  The  fact  that  we  may 
assume  the  prevalence  of  this  distinction  among  Christian  men, 
and  lay  it  at  the  basis  of  the  discussion  we  propose,  is  assuredly 
one  of  the  gains  which  the  nineteenth  century  has  to  record. 

It  follows  that  not  all  of  the  thinkers  with  whom  we  have 
to  deal  will  have  been,  in  their  own  time,  of  the  number  of 
avowedly  Christian  men.  Some  who  have  greatly  furthered 
movements  which  in  the  end  proved  fruitful  for  Christian 
thought,  have  been  men  who  were  in  their  own  time  alienated 
from  professed  and  official  religion.  In  the  retrospect  we 
must  often  feel  that  their  opposition  to  that  which  they  took 
to  be  religion  was  justifiable.     Yet  their  identification  of  that 


t]  INTRODUCTION  7 

with  religion  itself,  and  their  frank  declaration  of  what  they 
called  their  own  irreligion,  was  often  a  mistake.  It  was  a 
mistake  to  which  both  they  and  their  opponents  in  due 
proportion  contributed.  A  still  larger  class  of  those  with 
whom  we  have  to  do  have  indeed  asserted  for  themselves  a 
personal  adherence  to  Christianity.  But  their  identification 
with  Christianity,  or  with  a  particular  Christian  Church, 
has  been  often  bitterly  denied  by  those  who  bore  official 
responsibility  in  the  Church.  The  heresy  of  one  generation 
is  the  orthodoxy  of  the  next.  There  is  something  perverse  in 
Gottfried  Arnold's  maxim,  that  the  true  Church,  in  a^y  age,  is 
to  be  found  with  those  who  have  just  been  excommunicated 
from  the  actual  Church.  However,  the  maxim  points  in  the 
direction  of  a  truth.  By  far  the  larger  part  of  those  with 
whom  we  have  to  do  have  had  acknowledged  relation  to  the 
Christian  tradition  and  institution.  They  were  Christians 
and,  at  the  same  time,  true  children  of  the  intellectual  life 
of  their  own  age.  They  esteemed  it  not  merely  their  privi- 
lege, but  also  their  duty,  to  endeavour  to  ponder  anew  the 
religious  and  Christian  problem,  and  to  state  that  which  they 
thought  in  a  manner  congruous  with  the  thoughts  which  the 
men  of  the  age  would  naturally  have  concerning  other  themes. 
It  has  been  to  most  of  these  men  axiomatic  that  doc- 
trine has  only  relative  truth.  Doctrine  is  but  a  composite 
of  the  content  of  the  religious  consciousness  with  materials 
which  the  intellect  of  a  given  man  or  age  or  nation  in  the 
total  view  of  hfe  affords.  As  such,  doctrine  is  necessary  and 
inevitable  for  all  those  who  in  any  measure  live  the  life  of  the 
mind.  But  the  condition  of  doctrine  is  its  mobile,  its  fluid 
and  changing  character.  It  is  the  combination  of  a  more 
or  less  stable  and  characteristic  experience,  with  a  reflection 
which,  exactly  in  proportion  as  it  is  genuine,  is  transformed 
from  age  to  age,  is  modified  by  qualities  of  race  and,  in  the 
last  analysis,  differs  with  individual  men.  Dogma  is  that 
portion  of  doctrine  which  has  been  elevated  by  decree  of 
ecclesiastical  authority,  or  even  only  by  common  consent, 
into  an  absoluteness  uhich  is  altogether  foreign  to  its  nature. 
It  is  that  part  of  doctrine  concerning  which  men  have  for- 


8        HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

gotten  that  it  had  a  history,  and  have  decided  that  it  shall 
have  no  more.  In  its  very  notion  dogma  confounds  a  state- 
ment of  truth,  which  must  of  necessity  be  human,  with  the 
truth  itself,  which  is  divine.  In  its  identification  of  state- 
ment and  truth  it  demands  credence  instead  of  faith.  Men 
have  confounded  doctrine  and  dogma ;  they  have  been 
taught  so  to  do.  They  have  felt  the  history  of  Christian 
doctrine  to  be  an  unfruitful  and  uninteresting  theme.  But 
the  history  of  Christian  thought  would  seek  to  set  forth  the 
series  of  interpretations  put,  by  successive  generations,  upon 
the  greatest  of  all  human  experiences,  the  experience  of  the 
communion  of  men  with  God.  These  interpretations  ray 
out  at  all  edges  into  the  general  intellectual  life  of  the  age. 
They  draw  one  whole  set  of  their  formative  impulses  from 
the  general  intellectual  life  of  the  age.  It  is  this  relation 
of  the  progress  of  doctrine  to  the  general  history  of  thought 
in  the  nineteenth  century,  which  the  writer  designed  to 
emphasise  in  choosing  the  title  of  this  work. 

As  was  indicated  in  the  closing  paragraphs  of  the  preceding 
volume  of  this  series,  the  issue  of  the  age  of  rationalism  had 
been  for  the  cause  of  religion  on  the  whole  a  distressing  one. 
The  majority  of  those  who  were  resolved  to  follow  reason 
were  agreed  in  abjuring  religion.  That  they  had,  as  it  seems 
to  us,  but  a  meagre  understanding  of  what  religion  is,  made 
little  difference  in  their  conclusion.  Bishop  Butler  com- 
plains in  his  Analogy  that  religion  was  in  his  time  hardly 
considered  a  subject  for  discussion  among  reasonable  men. 
Schleiermacher  in  the  very  title  of  his  Discourses  makes  it 
plain  that  in  Germany  the  situation  was  not  different.  If 
the  reasonable  eschewed  religion,  pietists  in  Germany,  evan- 
gelicals in  England,  the  men  of  the  great  revivals  in  America, 
many  of  them,  took  up  a  corresponding  position  as  towards 
the  life  of  reason,  especially  toward  the  use  of  reason  in 
religion.  The  sinister  cast  which  the  word  rationalism  bears 
in  much  of  the  popular  speech  is  evidence  of  this  fact.  To 
many  minds  it  appeared  as  if  one  could  not  be  an  adherent 
both  of  reason  and  of  faith.  That  was  a  contradiction  which 
Kant,  first  of  all  in  his  own  experience,  and  then  through  his 


I.]  INTRODUCTION  9 

system  of  thought,  did  much  to  transcend.  The  deHverance 
which  he  wrought  has  been  compared  to  the  deUverance 
which  Luther  in  his  time  achieved  for  those  who  had 
been  in  bondage  to  scholasticism  in  the  Roman  Church. 
Although  Kant  has  been  dead  a  hundred  years,  both  the 
defence  of  religion  and  the  assertion  of  the  right  of  reason  are 
still,  with  many,  on  the  ancient  lines.  There  is  no  such 
strife  between  rationality  and  behef  as  has  been  supposed. 
But  the  confidence  of  that  fact  is  still  far  from  being  shared 
by  all  Christians  at  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century. 
The  course  in  reinterpretation  and  readjustment  of  Chris- 
tianity, which  that  calm  conviction  would  imply,  is  still  far 
from  being  the  one  taken  by  all  of  those  who  bear  the  Christian 
name.  If  it  is  permissible  in  the  writing  of  a  book  hke  this 
to  have  an  aim  besides  that  of  the  most  objective  delineation, 
the  author  may  perhaps  be  permitted  to  say  that  he  writes 
with  the  earnest  hope  that  in  some  measure  he  may  con- 
tribute also  to  the  estabhshment  of  an  understanding  upon 
which  so  much  both  for  the  Church  and  the  world  depends. 

We  should  say  a  word  at  this  point  as  to  the  general  relation 
of  religion  and  philosophy.  We  realise  the  evil  which  Kant 
first  in  clearness  pointed  out.  It  was  the  evil  of  an  appre- 
hension which  made  the  study  of  religion  a  department  of 
metaphysics.  The  tendency  of  that  apprehension  was  to 
do  but  scant  justice  to  the  historical  content  of  Christianity. 
Religion  is  an  historical  phenomenon.  Especially  is  this 
true  of  Christianity.  It  is  a  fact,  or  rather,  a  vast  complex 
of  facts.  It  is  a  positive  religion.  It  is  connected  with 
personaUties,  above  all  with  one  transcendent  personality, 
that  of  Jesus.  It  sprang  out  of  another  religion  which  had 
already  emerged  into  the  hght  of  world-history.  It  has 
been  associated  for  two  thousand  years  with  portions  of  the 
race  which  have  made  achievements  in  culture  and  left 
record  of  those  achievements.  It  is  the  function  of  specu- 
lation to  interpret  this  phenomenon.  When  speculation  is 
tempted  to  spin  by  its  own  processes  something  which  it 
would  set  beside  this  historic  magnitude  or  put  in  place  of 
it,   and  still  call   that  Christianity,   we  must  disallow  the 


10      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

claim.  It  was  the  licence  of  its  speculative  endeavour,  and 
the  identification  of  these  endeavours  with  Christianity, 
which  finally  discredited  Hegelianism  with  religious  men. 
Nor  can  it  be  denied  that  theologians  themselves  have  been 
sinners  in  this  respect.  The  disposition  to  regard  Christianity 
as  a  revealed  and  divinely  authoritative  metaphysic  began 
early  and  continued  long.  When  theologians  also  set  out 
to  interpret  Christianity  and  end  in  offering  us  a  substitute, 
which,  if  it  were  acknowledged  as  absolute  truth,  would  do 
away  with  Christianity  as  historic  fact,  as  little  can  we  allow 
the  claim. 

Again,  Christianity  exists  not  merely  as  a  matter  of  history. 
It  exists  also  as  a  fact  in  living  consciousness.  It  is  the 
function  of  psychology  to  investigate  that  consciousness. 
We  must  say  that,  accurately  speaking,  there  is  no  such  thing 
as  Christian  philosophy.  There  are  philosophies,  good  or  bad, 
current  or  obsolete.  These  are  Christian  only  in  being 
applied  to  the  history  of  Christianity  and  the  content  of  the 
Christian  consciousness.  There  is,  strictly  speaking,  no  such 
thing  as  Christian  consciousness.  There  is  the  human  con- 
sciousness, operating  with  and  operated  upon  by  the  impulse 
of  Christianity.  It  is  the  great  human  experience  from  which 
we  single  out  for  investigation  that  part  which  is  concerned 
with  religion,  and  call  that  the  religious  experience.  It  is 
essential,  therefore,  that  those  general  investigations  of 
human  consciousness  and  experience,  as  such,  which  are 
being  carried  on  all  about  us,  should  be  reckoned  with,  if 
our  Christian  life  and  thought  are  not  altogether  to  fall  out 
of  touch  with  advancing  knowledge.  For  this  reason  we  have 
misgiving  about  the  position  of  some  followers  of  Ritschl. 
Their  opinion,  pushed  to  its  limit,  seems  to  mean  that  we 
have  nothing  to  do  with  philosophy,  or  with  the  advance  of 
science.  Religion  is  a  feeling  of  which  he  alone  who  pos- 
sesses it  can  give  account.  He  alone  who  has  it  can  appreciate 
such  an  account  when  given.  We  acknowledge  that  religion 
is  in  part  a  feeling.  But  that  feeling  must  have  rational 
justification.  It  must  also  have  rational  guidance  if  it  is 
to  be  saved  from  degenerating  into  fanaticism. 


I.]  INTRODUCTION  11 

To  say  that  we  have  nothing  to  do  with  philosophy  ends 
in  our  having  to  do  with  a  bad  philosophy.  In  that  case  we 
have  a  philosophy  with  which  we  operate  without  having 
investigated  it,  instead  of  having  one  with  which  we  operate 
because  we  have  investigated  it.  The  philosophy  of  which 
we  are  aware  we  have.  The  philosophy  of  which  we  are  not 
aware  has  us.  No  doubt,  we  may  have  religion  without 
philosophy,  but  we  cannot  formulate  it  even  in  the  rudest  way 
to  ourselves,  we  cannot  communicate  it  in  any  way  what- 
soever to  others,  except  in  the  terms  of  a  philosophy.  In 
the  general  sense  in  which  every  man  has  a  philosophy,  this 
is  merely  the  deposit  of  the  regnant  notions  of  the  time.  It 
may  be  amended  or  superseded,  and  our  theology  with  it. 
Yet  while  it  lasts  it  is  our  one  possible  vehicle  of  expression. 
It  is  the  interpreter  and  the  critique  of  what  we  have  ex- 
perienced. It  is  not  open  to  a  man  to  retreat  within  himself 
and  say,  I  am  a  Christian,  I  feel  thus,  I  think  so,  these 
thoughts  are  the  content  of  Christianity.  The  consequence 
of  that  position  is  that  we  make  the  religious  experience  to 
be  no  part  of  the  normal  human  experience.  If  we  contend 
that  the  being  a  Christian  is  the  great  human  experience, 
that  the  religious  life  is  the  true  human  life,  we  must  pursue 
the  opposite  course.  We  must  make  the  religious  life  coherent 
with  all  the  other  phases  and  elements  of  life.  If  we  would 
contend  that  religious  thought  is  the  truest  and  deepest 
thought,  we  must  begin  at  this  very  point.  We  must  make 
it  conform  absolutely  to  the  laws  of  all  other  thought.  To 
contend  for  its  isolation,  as  an  area  by  itself  and  a  process 
subject  only  to  its  own  laws,  is  to  court  the  judgment  of  men, 
that  in  its  zeal  to  be  Christian  it  has  ceased  to  be  thought. 

Our  most  profitable  mode  of  procedure  would  seem  to  be 
this.  We  shall  seek  to  follow,  as  we  may,  those  few  main 
movements  of  thought  marking  the  nineteenth  century 
which  have  immediate  bearing  upon  our  theme.  We  shall 
try  to  register  the  effect  which  these  movements  have  had 
upon  religious  conceptions.  It  will  not  be  possible  at  any 
point  to  do  more  than  to  select  typical  examples.  Perhaps 
the  true  method  is  that  we  should  go  back  to  the  beginnings 


12      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

of  each  one  of  these  movements.  We  should  mark  the 
emergence  of  a  few  great  ideas.  It  is  the  emergence  of  an 
idea  which  is  dramatically  interesting.  It  is  the  moment  of 
emergence  in  which  that  which  is  characteristic  appears. 
Our  subject  is  far  too  complicated  to  permit  that  the  rami- 
fications of  these  influences  should  be  followed  in  detail. 
Modifications,  subtractions,  additions,  the  reader  must  make 
for  himself. 

These  main  movements  of  thought  are,  as  has  been  said, 
three  in  number.  We  shall  take  them  in  their  chronological 
order.  There  is  first  the  philosophical  revolution  which 
is  commonly  associated  with  the  name  of  Kant.  If  we 
were  to  seek  with  arbitrary  exactitude  to  fix  a  date  for  the 
beginning  of  this  movement,  this  might  be  the  year  of  the 
publication  of  his  first  great  work,  Kritik  der  reinen  Ver- 
nunft,  in  1781. ^  Kant  was  indeed  himself,  both  intellec- 
tually and  spiritually,  the  product  of  tendencies  which  had 
long  been  gathering  strength.  He  was  the  exponent  of  ideas 
which  in  fragmentary  way  had  been  expressed  by  others,  but 
he  gathered  into  himself  in  amazing  fashion  the  impulses 
of  his  age.  Out  from  some  portion  of  his  works  lead  almost 
all  the  paths  which  philosophical  thinkers  since  his  time  have 
trod.  One  cannot  say  even  of  his  work.  Die  Religion  innerhalb 
der  Grenzen  der  blossen  Vernunft,  1793,  that  it  is  the  sole 
source,  or  even  the  greatest  source,  of  his  influence  upon 
religious  thinking.  But  from  the  body  of  his  work  as  a  whole, 
there  came  a  new  theory  of  knowledge  which  has  changed 
completely  the  notion  of  revelation.  There  came  also  a  view 
of  the  universe  as  an  ideal  unity  which,  especially  as  elabor- 
ated by  Fichte,  Schelling  and  Hegel,  has  radically  altered 
the  traditional  ideas  of  God,  of  man,  of  nature  and  of  their 
relations,  the  one  to  the  other. 

We  shall  have  then,  secondly,  to  note  the  historical  and 
critical  movement.  It  is  the  effort  to  apply  consistently  and 
without  fear  the  maxims  of  historical  and  literary  criticism 

1  In  the  text  the  titles  of  books  which  are  discussed  are  given  for  the  first 
time  in  the  language  in  which  they  are  written.  Books  which  are  merely 
alluded  to  are  mentioned  in  English. 


I.]  INTRODUCTION  13 

to  the  documents  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments.     With 
still  greater  arbitrariness,  and  yet  with  appreciation  of  the 
significance  of  Strauss'  endeavour,  we  might  set  as  the  date  of     y 
the  full  impact  of  this  movement  upon  cherished  religious  (p'' 
convictions,  that   of    the    publication    of    his   Leben  Jesu, 
1835.     This  movement  has  supported  with  abundant  evi- 
dence the  insight  of  the  philosophers  as  to  the  nature  of 
revelation.     It  has  shown  that  that  which  we  actually  have  ) 
in  the  Scriptures  is  just  that  which  Kant,  with  his  reverences 
for  the  freedom  of  the  human  mind,  had  indicated  that  we 
must  have,  if  revelation  is  to  be  believed  in  at  all.     With 
this  changed  view  has  come  an  altered  attitude  toward  many 
statements  which  devout  men  had  held  that  they  must  accept 
as  true,  because  these  were  found  in  Scripture.     With  this 
changed  view  the  whole  history,  whether  of  the  Jewish  people 
or  of  Jesus  and  the  origins  of  the  Christian  Church,  has  been 
set  in  a  new  light. 

In  the  third  place,  we  shall  have  to  deal  with  the  influence 
of  the  sciences  of  nature  and  of  society,  as  these  have  been 
developed  throughout  the  whole  course  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  If  one  must  have  a  date  for  an  outstanding  event 
in  this  portion  of  the  history,  perhaps  that  of  the  publication 
of  Darwin's  Origin  of  Species,  1859,  would  serve  as  well  as 
any  other.  The  principles  of  these  sciences  have  come  to 
underlie  in  a  great  measure  all  the  reflection  of  cultivated 
men  in  our  time.  In  amazing  degree  they  have  percolated, 
through  elementary  instruction,  through  popular  literature, 
and  through  the  newspapers,  to  the  masses  of  mankind. 
They  are  recognised  as  the  basis  of  a  triumphant  material 
civilisation,  which  has  made  everything  pertaining  to  the 
inner  and  spiritual  life  seem  remote.  Through  the  social 
sciences  there  has  come  an  impulse  to  the  transfer  of  em- 
phasis from  the  individual  to  society,  the  disposition  to  see 
everything  in  its  social  bearing,  to  do  everything  in  the  light 
of  its  social  antecedents  and  of  its  social  consequences.  Here 
again  we  have  to  note  the  profoundest  influence  upon  rehgious 
conceptions.  The  very  notion  connected  with  the  words 
redemption  and  salvation  appears  to  have  been  changed. 


14      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [en. 

In  the  case  of  each  of  these  particular  movements  the 
church,  as  the  organ  of  Christianity,  has  passed  through  a 
period  of  antagonism  to  these  influences,  of  fear  of  their 
consequences,  of  resistance  to  their  progress.  In  large 
portions  of  the  church  at  the  present  moment  the  protest 
is  renewed.  The  substance  of  these  modern  teachings, 
which  yet  seem  to  be  the  very  warp  and  woof  of  the  intel- 
lectual life  of  the  modern  man,  is  repudiated  and  denounced. 
It  is  held  to  imperil  the  salvation  of  the  soul.  It  is  pro- 
nounced impossible  of  combination  with  belief  in  a  divinely 
revealed  truth  concerning  the  universe  and  a  saving  faith 
for  men.  In  other  churches,  and  outside  the  churches,  the 
forms  in  which  men  hold  their  Christianity  have  been  in 
large  measure  adjusted  to  the  results  of  these  great  move- 
ments of  thought.  They  have,  as  these  men  themselves 
believe,  been  immensely  strengthened  and  made  sure  by  those 
very  influences  which  were  once  esteemed  dangerous. 

In  connection  with  this  indication  of  the  nature  of  our 
materials,  we  have  sought  to  say  something  of  the  time  of 
emergence  of  the  salient  elements.  It  may  be  in  point  also 
to  give  some  intimation  of  the  place  of  their  origins,  that  is 
to  say,  of  the  participation  of  the  various  nationalities  in  this 
common  task  of  the  modern  Christian  world.  That  inter- 
national quality  of  scholarship  which  seems  to  us  natural, 
is  a  thing  of  very  recent  date.  That  a  discovery  should 
within  a  reasonable  interval  become  the  property  of  all 
educated  men,  that  scholars  of  one  nation  should  profit  by 
that  which  the  learned  of  another  land  have  done,  appears 
to  us  a  thing  to  be  assumed.  It  has  not  always  been  so, 
especially  not  in  matters  of  religious  truth.  The  Roman 
Church  and  the  Latin  language  gave  to  mediaeval  Christian 
thought  a  certain  international  character.  Again  the  Renais- 
sance and  Reformation  had  a  certain  world-wide  quality. 
The  relations  of  the  English  Church  in  the  reigns  of  the  last 
Tudors  to  Germany,  Switzerland  and  France  are  not  to  be 
forgotten.  But  the  life  of  the  Protestant  national  churches 
in  the  eighteenth  century  shows  little  of  this  trait.  The 
barriers    of    language    counted    for    something.      The    pro- 


L]  INTRODUCTION  15 

vincialism  of  national  churches  and  denominational  pre- 
dilections counted  for  more. 

In  the  philosophical  movement  we  must  begin  with  the 
Germans.  The  movement  of  English  thought  known  as 
deism  was  a  distinct  forerunner  of  the  rationalist  movement, 
within  the  particular  area  of  the  discussion  of  rehgion. 
However,  it  ran  into  the  sand.  The  rationalist  movement, 
considered  in  its  other  aspects,  never  attained  in  England 
in  the  eighteenth  century  the  proportions  which  it  assumed 
in  France  and  Germany.  In  France  that  movement  ran  its 
full  course,  both  among  the  learned  and,  equally,  as  a  radical 
and  revolutionary  influence  among  the  unlearned.  It  had 
momentous  practical  consequences.  In  no  sphere  was  it 
more  radical  than  in  that  of  rehgion.  Not  in  vain  had 
Voltaire  for  years  cried,  '  Ecrasez  Vinfame,'  and  Rousseau 
preached  that  the  youth  would  all  be  wise  and  pure,  if  only 
the  kind  of  education  which  he  had  had  in  the  religious 
schools  were  made  impossible.  There  was  for  many  minds 
no  alternative  between  clericalism  and  atheism.  Quite 
logically,  therefore,  after  the  downfall  of  the  RepubUc  and  of 
the  Empire  there  set  in  a  great  reaction.  Still  it  was  simply 
a  reversion  to  the  absolute  religion  of  the  Roman  Cathohc 
Church  as  set  forth  by  the  Jesuit  party.  There  was  no  real 
transcending  of  the  rationalist  movement  in  France  in  the 
interest  of  religion.  There  has  been  no  great  constructive 
movement  in  rehgious  thought  in  France  in  the  nineteenth 
century.  There  is  relatively  httle  hterature  of  our  subject 
in  the  French  language  imtil  recent  years. 

In  Germany,  on  the  other  hand,  the  rationahst  movement 
had  always  had  over  against  it  the  great  foil  and  counterpoise 
of  the  pietist  movement.  Rationalism  ran  a  much  soberer 
course  than  in  France.  It  was  never  a  revolutionary  and 
destructive  movement  as  in  France.  It  was  not  a  dilettante 
and  aristocratic  movement  as  deism  had  been  in  England. 
It  was  far  more  creative  and  constructive  than  elsewhere. 
Here  also  before  the  end  of  the  century  it  had  run  its  course. 
Yet  here  the  men  who  transcended  the  rationalist  movement 
and  shaped  the  spiritual  revival  in  the  beginning  of  the 


16      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

nineteenth  century  were  men  who  had  themselves  been  traiaed 
in  the  bosom  of  the  rationahst  movement.  They  had  appro- 
priated the  benefits  of  it.  They  did  not  represent  a  violent 
reaction  against  it,  but  a  natural  and  inevitable  progress 
within  and  beyond  it.  This  it  was  which  gave  to  the  Germans 
their  leadership  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century 
in  the  sphere  of  the  intellectual  life.  It  is  worthy  of  note 
that  the  great  heroes  of  the  intellectual  life  in  Germany,  in 
the  period  of  which  we  speak,  w^ere  most  of  them  deeply 
interested  in  the  problem  of  religion.  The  first  man  to  bring 
to  England  the  leaven  of  this  new  spirit,  and  therewith  to 
transcend  the  old  philosophical  standpoint  of  Locke  and 
Hume,  was  Coleridge  with  his  Aids  to  Reflection,  pubhshed 
in  1825.  But  even  after  this  impulse  of  Coleridge  the  move- 
ment remained  in  England  a  sporadic  and  uncertain  one. 
It  had  nothing  of  the  volume  and  consecutiveness  which 
belonged  to  it  in  Germany. 

Coleridge  left  among  his  literary  remains  a  work  published 
in  1840  under  the  title  of  Confessions  of  an  Enquiring 
Spirit.  What  is  here  written  is  largely  upon  the  basis  of 
intuition  and  forecast  like  that  of  Reimarus  and  Lessing  a 
half-century  earlier  in  Germany.  Strauss  and  others  were 
already  at  work  in  Germany  upon  the  problem  of  the  New 
Testament,  Vatke  and  Reuss  upon  that  of  the  Old.  This 
was  a  different  kind  of  labour,  and  destined  to  have  im- 
measurably greater  significance.  George  Eliot's  maiden 
literary  labour  was  the  translation  into  English  of  Strauss' 
first  edition.  But  the  results  of  that  criticism  were  only 
slowly  appropriated  by  the  English.  The  ostensible  results 
were  at  first  radical  and  subversive  in  the  extreme.  They 
were  fiercely  repudiated  in  Strauss'  own  country.  Yet  in 
the  main  there  was  acknowledgment  of  the  correctness  of  the 
principle  for  which  Strauss  had  stood.  Hardly  before  the 
decade  of  the  sixties  was  that  method  accepted  in  England 
in  any  wider  way,  and  hardly  before  the  decade  of  the  seventies 
in  America.  Kenan  was  the  first  to  set  forth,  in  1863,  the 
historical  and  critical  problem  in  the  new  spirit,  in  a  way  that 
the  wide  public  which  read  French  understood. 


I.]  INTRODUCTION  17 

\\lien  we  come  to  speak  of  the  scientific  movement  it  is 
not  easy  to  say  where  the  leadership  lay.  Many  Englishmen 
were  in  the  first  rank  of  investigators  and  accumulators  of 
material.  The  first  attempt  at  a  systematisation  of  the 
results  of  the  modern  sciences  was  that  of  Auguste  Comte  in 
his  Philosophie  Positive.  This  philosophy,  however,  under 
its  name  of  Positivism,  exerted  a  far  greater  influence,  both 
in  Comte's  time  and  subsequently,  in  England  than  it  did  in 
France.  Herbert  Spencer,  after  the  middle  of  the  decade  of 
tjie  sixties,  essayed  to  do  something  of  the  sort  which  Comte 
had  attempted.  He  had  far  greater  advantages  for  the 
solution  of  the  problem.  Comte's  foil  in  all  of  his  discussions 
of  religion  was  the  Catholicism  of  the  south  of  France.  None 
the  less,  the  religion  which  in  his  later  years  he  created,  bears 
striking  resemblance  to  that  which  in  his  earlier  years  he  had 
sought  to  destrojT-.  Spencer's  attitude  toward  religion  was 
in  his  earlier  work  one  of  more  pronounced  antagonism  or, 
at  least,  of  more  complete  agnosticism  than  in  later  days  he 
found  requisite  to  the  maintenance  of  his  scientific  freedom 
and  conscientiousness.  Both  of  these  men  represent  the 
effort  to  construe  the  world,  including  man,  from  the  point 
of  view  of  the  natural  and  also  of  the  social  sciences,  and  to 
define  the  place  of  religion  in  that  view  of  the  world  which 
is  thus  set  forth.  The  fact  that  there  had  been  no  such  philo- 
sophical readjustment  in  Great  Britain  as  in  Germany,  made 
the  acceptance  of  the  evolutionary  theory  of  the  universe, 
which  more  and  more  the  sciences  enforced,  slower  and  more 
difficult.  The  period  of  resistance  on  the  part  of  those 
interested  in  religion  extended  far  into  the  decade  of  the 
seventies. 

A  word  may  be  added  concerning  America.  The  early 
settlers  had  been  proud  of  their  connection  with  the  English 
universities.  An  extraordinary  number  of  them,  in  Massa- 
chusetts at  least,  had  been  Cambridge  men.  Yet  a  tradition 
of  learning  was  later  developed,  which  was  not  without  the 
traits  of  isolation  natural  in  the  circumstances.  The  resi- 
dence, for  a  time,  even  of  a  man  like  Berkeley  in  this  country, 
altered  that  but  little.      The  clergy  remained  in  singular 

B 


18      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

degree  the  educated  and  highly  influential  class.  The 
churches  had  developed,  in  consonance  with  their  Puritan 
character,  a  theology  and  philosophy  so  portentous  in  their 
conclusions,  that  we  can  without  difficulty  understand  the  re- 
action which  was  brought  about.  Wesleyanism  had  modified 
it  in  some  portions  of  the  country,  but  intensified  it  in  others. 
Deism  apparently  had  had  no  great  influence.  When  the 
rationalist  movement  of  the  old  world  began  to  make  itself  felt, 
it  was  at  first  largely  through  the  influence  of  France.  The 
religious  life  of  the  country  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth 
century  was  at  a  low  ebb.  Men  like  Belsham  and  Priestley 
were  known  as  apostles  of  a  freer  spirit  in  the  treatment  of 
the  problem  of  rehgion.  Priestley  came  to  Pennsylvania  in 
his  exile.  In  the  large,  however,  one  may  say  that  the  New 
England  hberal  movement,  which  came  by  and  by  to  be 
called  Unitarian,  was  as  truly  American  as  was  the  orthodoxy 
to  which  it  was  opposed.  Channing  reminds  one  often  of 
Schleiermacher.  There  is  no  evidence  that  he  had  learned 
from  Schleiermacher.  The  liberal  movement  by  its  very 
impetuosity  gave  a  new  lease  of  life  to  an  orthodoxy  which, 
without  that  antagonism,  would  sooner  have  waned.  The 
great  revivals,  which  were  a  benediction  to  the  life  of  the 
country,  were  thought  to  have  closer  relation  to  the  theology 
of  those  who  participated  in  them  than  they  had.  The 
breach  between  the  liberal  and  conservative  tendencies  of 
religious  thought  in  this  country  came  at  a  time  when  the 
philosophical  reconstruction  was  already  well  under  way  in 
Europe.  The  debate  continued  until  long  after  the  biblical- 
critical  movement  was  in  progress.  The  controversy  was 
conducted  upon  both  sides  in  practically  total  ignorance  of 
these  facts.  There  are  traces  upon  both  sides  of  that  insight 
which  makes  the  mystic  a  discoverer  in  religion,  before  the 
logic  known  to  him  will  sustain  the  conclusion  which  he  draws. 
There  will  always  be  interest  in  the  literature  of  a  discussion 
conducted  by  reverent  and,  in  their  own  way,  learned  and 
original  men.  Yet  there  is  a  pathos  about  the  sturdy  origin- 
ality of  good  men  expended  upon  a  problem  which  had  been 
already  solved.     The  men  in  either  camp  proceeded  from 


I.]  INTRODUCTION  19 

assumptions  which  are  now  impossible  to  the  men  of  both. 
It  was  not  until  after  the  Civil  War  that  American  students 
of  theology  began  in  numbers  to  study  in  Germany.  It  is 
a  much  more  recent  thing  that  one  may  assume  the  immediate 
reading  of  foreign  books,  or  boast  of  current  contribution 
from  American  scholars  to  the  labour  of  the  world's  thought 
upon  these  themes. 

We  should  make  a  great  mistake  if  we  supposed  that  the 
progress  has  been  an  unceasing  forward  movement.  Quite 
the  contrary,  in  every  aspect  of  it  the  life  of  the  early  part 
of  the  nineteenth  century  presents  the  spectacle  of  a  great 
reaction.  The  resurgence  of  old  ideas  and  forces  seems 
almost  incredible.  In  the  political  world  we  are  wont  to 
attribute  this  fact  to  the  disillusionment  which  the  French 
Revolution  had  wrought,  and  the  suffering  which  the  Napo- 
leonic Empire  had  entailed.  The  reaction  in  the  world  of 
thought,  and  particularly  of  religious  thought,  was,  moreover, 
as  marked  as  that  in  the  world  of  deeds.  The  Roman  Church 
profited  by  this  swing  of  the  pendulum  in  the  minds  of  men 
as  much  as  did  the  absolute  State.  Almost  the  first  act  of 
Pius  vn.  after  his  return  to  Rome  in  1814,  was  the  revival 
of  the  Society  of  Jesus,  which  had  been  after  long  agony  in 
1773  dissolved  by  the  papacy  itself.  'Altar  and  throne '  became 
the  watchword  of  an  ardent  attempt  at  restoration  of  all  of 
that  which  millions  had  given  their  lives  to  do  away.  All  too 
easily,  one  who  writes  in  sympathy  with  that  which  is  con- 
ventionally called  progress  may  give  the  impression  that  our 
period  is  one  in  which  movement  has  been  all  in  one  direction. 
That  is  far  from  being  true.  One  whose  very  ideal  of  pro- 
gress is  that  of  movement  in  directions  opposite  to  those  we 
have  described  may  well  say  that  the  nineteenth  century 
has  had  its  gifts  for  him  as  well.  The  life  of  mankind  is  too 
complex  that  one  should  write  of  it  with  one  exclusive  stan- 
dard as  to  loss  and  gain.  And  whatever  be  one's  standard 
the  facts  cannot  be  ignored. 

The  France  of  the  thirties  and  the  forties  saw  a  liberal 
movement  within  the  Roman  Church.  The  names  of  Lamen- 
nais,  of  Lacordaire,  of  Montalembert  and  Ozanam,  the  title 


20      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch 

VAvenir  occur  to  men's  minds  at  once.  Perhaps  there  has 
never  been  in  France  a  party  more  truly  CathoHc,  more 
devout,  refined  and  tolerant,  more  fitted  to  heal  the  breach 
between  the  cultivated  and  the  Church.  However,  before 
the  Second  Empire,  an  end  had  been  made  of  that.  It 
cannot  be  said  that  the  French  Church  exactly  favoured 
the  infallibility.  It  certainly  did  not  stand  against  the  decree 
as  in  the  old  days  it  would  have  done.  The  decree  of  in- 
fallibility is  itself  the  greatest  witness  of  the  steady  progress 
of  reaction  in  the  Roman  Church.  Tliat  action,  theoretically 
at  least,  does  away  with  even  that  measure  of  popular  con- 
stitution in  the  Church  to  which  the  end  of  the  Middle  Age 
had  held  fast  without  wavering,  which  the  mightiest  of  popes 
had  not  been  able  to  abolish  and  the  Council  of  Trent  had 
not  dared  earnestly  to  debate.  Whether  the  decree  of  1870 
is  viewed  in  the  light  of  the  Syllabus  of  Errors  of  1864,  and 
again  of  the  Encyclical  of  1907,  or  whether  the  encycHcals  are 
viewed  in  the  light  of  the  decree,  the  fact  remains  that  a 
power  has  been  given  to  the  Curia  against  what  has  come  to 
be  called  Modernism  such  as  Innocent  never  wielded  against 
the  heresies  of  his  day.  Meantime,  so  hostile  are  exactly 
those  peoples  among  whom  Roman  Catholicism  has  had  full 
sway,  that  it  would  almost  appear  that  the  hope  of  the  Roman 
Church  is  in  those  countries  in  which,  in  the  sequence  of  the 
Reformation,  a  religious  tolerance  obtains,  which  the  Roman 
Church  would  have  done  everything  in  its  power  to  prevent. 

Again,  we  should  deceive  ourselves  if  we  supposed  that 
the  reaction  had  been  felt  only  in  Roman  Catholic  lands. 
A  minister  of  Prussia  forbade  Kant  to  speak  concerning 
religion.  The  Prussia  of  Frederick  William  ni.  and  of 
Frederick  William  iv.  was  almost  as  reactionary  as  if  Metter- 
nich  had  ruled  in  Berlin  as  well  as  in  Vienna.  The  history 
of  the  censorship  of  the  press  and  of  the  repression  of  free 
thought  in  Germany  until  the  year  1848  is  a  sad  chapter. 
The  ruling  influences  in  the  Lutheran  Church  in  that  era, 
practically  throughout  Germany,  were  reactionary.  The 
universities  did  indeed  in  large  measure  retain  their  ancient 
freedom .    But  the  church  in  which  Hengstenberg  could  be 


1.]  INTRODUCTION  21 

a  leader,  and  in  which  staunch  seventeenth-century  Lutheran- 
ism  could  be  effectively  sustained,  was  almost  doomed  to 
further  that  ahenation  between  the  life  of  piety  and  the  life 
of  learning  which  is  so  much  to  be  deplored.  In  the  Church 
the  conservatives  have  to  this  moment  largely  triumphed. 
In  the  theological  faculties  of  the  universities  the  liberals 
in  the  main  have  held  their  own.  The  fact  that  both  Church 
and  faculties  are  functionaries  of  the  State  is  often  cited  as 
sure  in  the  end  to  bring  about  a  solution  of  this  unhappy 
state  of  things.  For  such  a  solution,  it  must  be  owned,  we 
wait. 

The  England  of  the  period  after  1815  had  indeed  no  such 
cause  for  reaction  as  obtained  in  France  or  even  in  Germany. 
The  nation  having  had  its  Revolution  in  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury escaped  that  of  the  eighteenth.  Still  the  country  was 
exhausted  in  the  conflict  against  Napoleon.  Commercial, 
industrial  and  social  problems  agitated  it.  The  Church 
slumbered.  For  a  time  the  hberal  thought  of  England 
found  utterance  mainly  through  the  poets.  By  the  decade 
of  the  thirties  movement  had  begun.  The  opinions  of  the 
Noetics  in  Oriel  College,  Oxford,  now  seem  distinctly  mild. 
They  were  sufficient  to  awaken  Newsman  and  Pusey,  Froude, 
Keble,  and  the  rest.  Then  followed  the  most  significant 
ecclesiastical  movement  which  the  Church  of  England  in  the 
nineteenth  century  has  seen,  the  Oxford  or  Tractarian  move- 
ment, as  it  has  been  called.  There  was  conscious  recurrence 
of  a  mind  like  that  of  Newman  to  the  Catholic  position.  He 
had  never  been  3,ble  to  conceive  religion  in  any  other  terms 
than  those  of  dogma,  or  the  Christian  assurance  on  any  other 
basis  than  that  of  external  authority.  Nothing  could  be 
franker  than  the  antagonism  of  the  movement,  from  its  in- 
ception, to  the  liberal  spirit  of  the  age.  By  inner  logic 
Newman  found  himself  at  last  in  the  Roman  Church.  Yet 
the  Anglo-Catholic  movement  is  to-day  overwhelmingly  in 
the  ascendant  in  the  English  Church.  The  Broad  Churchmen 
of  the  middle  of  the  century  have  had  few  successors.  It  is 
the  High  Church  which  stands  over  against  the  great  mass 
of  the  dissenting  churches  which,  taken  in  the  large,  can 


22     HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [cf. 

hardly  be  said  to  be  theologically  more  liberal  than  itself. 
It  is  the  High  Church  which  has  showed  Franciscanhke 
devotion  in  the  problems  of  social  readjustment  which  Eng- 
land to-day  presents.  It  has  shown  in  some  part  of  its 
constituency  a  power  of  assimilation  of  new  philosophical, 
critical  and  scientific  views,  which  makes  all  comparison  of 
it  with  the  Roman  Church  misleading.  And  yet  it  remains  in 
its  own  consciousness  Catholic  to  the  core. 

In  America  also  the  vigour  of  onset  of  the  liberalising 
forces  at  the  beginning  of  the  century  tended  to  provoke 
reaction.  The  alarm  with  which  the  defection  of  so  consider- 
able a  portion  of  the  Puritan  Church  was  viewed  gave  coher- 
ence to  the  opposition.  There  were  those  who  devoutly  held 
that  the  hope  of  religion  lay  in  its  further  liberalisation. 
Equally  there  were  those  who  deeply  felt  that  the  deliverance 
lay  in  resistance  to  liberalisation.  One  of  the  concrete 
effects  of  the  division  of  the  churches  was  the  separation  of 
the  education  of  the  clergy  from  the  universities,  the  entrust- 
ing it  to  isolated  theological  schools  under  denominational 
control.  The  system  has  done  less  harm  than  might  have 
been  expected.  Yet  at  present  there  would  appear  to  be 
a  general  movement  of  recurrence  to  the  elder  tradition. 
The  maintenance  of  the  religious  Ufe  is  to  some  extent  a 
matter  of  nurture  and  observances,  of  religious  habit  and 
practice.  This  truth  is  one  which  liberals,  in  their  emphasis 
upon  hberty  and  the  individual,  are  always  in  danger  of 
overlooking.  The  great  revivals  of  religion  in  this  century, 
like  those  of  the  century  previous,  have  been  connected  with 
a  form  of  religious  thought  pronouncedly  pietistic.  The 
building  up  of  rehgious  institutions  in  the  new  regions  of  the 
West,  and  the  participation  of  the  churches  of  the  country 
in  missions,  wear  predominantly  this  cast.  Antecedently, 
one  might  have  said  that  the  lack  of  ecclesiastical  cohesion 
among  the  Christians  of  the  land,  the  ease  with  which  a  small 
group  might  split  off  for  the  furtherance  of  its  own  particular 
view,  would  tend  to  liberalisation.  It  is  doubtful  whether 
this  is  true.  Isolation  is  not  necessarily  a  condition  of  pro- 
gress.    The  emphasis  upon  trivial  differences  becomes  rather 


L]  INTRODUCTION  23 

a  condition  of  their  permanence.  The  middle  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  in  the  United  States  was  a  period  of  intense 
denominationaHsm.  That  is  synonymous  with  a  period  of 
the  stagnation  of  Christian  thought.  The  rehgion  of  a  people 
absorbed  in  the  practical  is  likely  to  be  one  which  they  at 
least  suppose  to  be  a  practical  religion.  In  one  age  the  most 
practical  thing  will  appear  to  men  to  be  to  escape  hell,  in 
another  to  further  socialism.  The  need  of  adjustment  of 
religion  to  the  great  intellectual  life  of  the  world  comes  with 
contact  with  that  hfe.  What  strikes  one  in  the  survey  of 
the  religious  thought  of  the  country,  by  and  large,  for  a 
century  and  a  quarter,  is  not  so  much  that  it  has  been 
reactionary,  as  that  it  has  been  stationary.  Almost  every 
other  aspect  of  the  life  of  our  country,  including  even  that 
of  religious  life  as  distinguished  from  religious  thought,  has 
gone  ahead  by  leaps  and  bounds.  This  it  is  which  in  a 
measure  has  created  the  tension  which  we  feel. 


B. — ^The  Background 

Deism 

In  England  before  the  end  of  the  Civil  War  a  movement 
for  the  rationalisation  of  religion  had  begun  to  make  itself 
felt.  It  was  in  full  force  in  the  time  of  the  Revolution  of 
1688.  It  had  not  altogether  spent  itself  by  the  middle  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  The  movement  has  borne  the  name  of 
Deism.  In  so  far  as  it  had  one  watchword,  this  came  to  be 
*  natural  religion.'  The  antithesis  had  in  mind  was  that  to 
revealed  religion,  as  this  had  been  set  forth  in  the  tradition 
of  the  Church,  and  particularly  under  the  bibliolatry  of  the 
Puritans.  It  is  a  witness  to  the  liberty  of  speech  enjoyed 
by  Englishmen  in  that  day  and  to  their  interest  in  religion, 
that  such  a  movement  could  have  arisen  largely  among 
laymen  who  were  often  men  of  rank.  It  is  an  honour  to 
the  English  race  that,  in  the  period  of  the  rising  might  of 
the  rational  spirit  throughout  the  western  world,  men  should 
have  sought  at  once  to  utilise  that  force  for  the  restatement 


24      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

of  religion.  Yet  one  may  say  quite  simply  that  this  under- 
taking of  the  deists  was  premature.  The  time  was  not  ripe 
for  the  endeavour.  The  rationalist  movement  itself  needed 
greater  breadth  and  deeper  understanding  of  itself.  Above 
all,  it  needed  the  salutary  correction  of  opposing  principles 
before  it  could  avail  for  this  dehcate  and  difl&cult  task.  Re- 
ligion is  the  most  conservative  of  human  interests.  Rational- 
ism would  be  successful  in  establishing  a  new  interpretation 
of  religion  only  after  it  had  been  successful  in  many  other 
fields.  The  arguments  of  the  deists  were  never  successfully 
refuted.  On  the  contrary,  the  striking  thing  is  that  their 
opponents,  the  militant  divines  and  writers  of  numberless 
volumes  of  '  Evidences  for  Christianity,'  had  come  to  the  same 
rational  basis  with  the  deists.  They  referred  even  the  most 
subtle  questions  to  the  pure  reason,  as  no  one  now  would  do. 
The  deistical  movement  was  not  really  defeated.  It  largely 
compelled  its  opponents  to  adopt  its  methods.  It  left  a 
deposit  which  is  more  nearly  rated  at  its  worth  at  the  present 
than  it  was  in  its  own  time.  But  it  ceased  to  command 
confidence,  or  even  interest.  Samuel  Johnson  said,  as  to 
the  publication  of  Bolingbroke's  work  by  his  executor,  three 
years  after  the  author's  death  :  '  It  was  a  rusty  old  blunder- 
buss, which  he  need  not  have  been  afraid  to  discharge  himself, 
instead  of  leaving  a  half-crown  to  a  Scotchman  to  let  it  off 
after  his  death.' 

It  is  a  great  mistake,  however,  in  describing  the  influence 
of  rationalism  upon  Christian  thought  to  deal  mainly  with 
deism.  English  deism  made  itself  felt  in  France,  as  one  may 
see  in  the  case  of  Voltaire.  Kant  was  at  one  time  deeply 
moved  by  some  English  writers  who  would  be  assigned  to 
this  class.  In  a  sense  Kant  showed  traces  of  the  deistical 
view  to  the  last.  The  centre  of  the  rationalistic  movement 
had,  however,  long  since  passed  from  England  to  the 
Continent.  The  religious  problem  was  no  longer  its  central 
problem.  We  quite  fail  to  appreciate  what  the  nineteenth 
century  owes  to  the  eighteenth  and  to  the  rationalist  move- 
ment in  general,  unless  we  view  this  latter  in  a  far  largei 
way. 


I.]  INTRODUCTION  25 

Rationalism 

In  1784  Kant  wrote  a  tractate  entitled,  Was  ist  Auf- 
hldrung  ?  He  said :  '  Aufklarung  is  the  advance  of  man 
beyond  the  stage  of  voluntary  immaturity.  By  immaturity  ^^ 
is  meant  a  man's  inability  to  use  his  understanding  except 
under  the  guidance  of  another.  The  immaturity  is  voluntary 
when  the  cause  is  not  want  of  intelligence  but  of  resolution. 
Sapere  aude  !  *'  Dare  to  use  thine  own  understanding,"  is 
therefore  the  motto  of  free  thought.  If  it  be  asked,  "  Do 
we  live  in  a  free- thinking  age  ?  "  the  answer  is,  "  No,  but 
we  live  in  an  age  of  free  thought."  As  things  are  at  present, 
men  in  general  are  very  far  from  possessing,  or  even  from 
being  able  to  acquire,  the  power  of  making  a  sure  and  right 
use  of  their  owti  understanding  without  the  guidance  of  others. 
On  the  other  hand,  we  have  clear  indications  that  the  field 
now  lies,  nevertheless,  open  before  them,  to  which  they  can 
freely  make  their  way  and  that  the  hindrances  to  general 
freedom  of  thought  are  gradually  becoming  less.'  And  again 
he  says  :  '  If  we  wish  to  insure  the  true  use  of  the  under- 
standing by  a  method  which  is  universally  valid,  we  must 
first  critically  examine  the  laws  which  are  involved  in  the  very 
nature  of  the  understanding  itself.  For  the  knowledge  of  a 
truth  which  is  valid  for  everyone  is  possible  only  when  based 
on  laws  which  are  involved  in  the  nature  of  the  human  mind, 
as  such,  and  have  not  been  imported  into  it  from  without 
through  facts  of  experience,  which  must  always  be  accidental 
and  conditional.' 

There  speaks,  of  course,  the  prophet  of  the  new  age  which 
was  to  transcend  the  old  rationalist  movement.  Men  had 
come  to  harp  in  complacency  upon  reason.  They  had 
never  inquired  into  the  nature  and  laws  of  action  of  the 
reason  itself.  Kant,  though  in  fullest  sympathy  with  its 
fundamental  principles,  was  yet  aware  of  the  excesses  and 
weaknesses  in  which  the  rationalist  movement  was  running 
out.  No  man  was  ever  more  truly  a  child  of  rationalism.  No 
man  has  ever  written,  to  whom  the  human  reason  was  more 
divine  and  inviolable.     Yet  no  man  ever  had  greater  reserves 


26       HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT  [ch. 

within  himself  which  rationahsm,  as  it  had  been,  had  never 
touched.  It  was  he,  therefore,  who  could  lay  the  foundations 
for  a  new  and  nobler  philosophy  for  the  future.  The  word 
Aufkldrung^  which  the  speech  of  the  Fatherland  furnished 
him,  is  a  better  word  than  ours.  It  is  a  better  word  than 
the  French  Vllluminisme,  the  Enlightenment.  Still  we  are 
apparently  committed  to  the  term  Rationalism,  although 
it  is  not  an  altogether  fortunate  designation  which  the 
English-speaking  race  has  given  to  a  tendency  practically 
universal  in  the  thinking  of  Europe,  from  about  1650  to 
the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Historically,  the 
I  rationalistic  movement  was  the  necessaiy  prehminary  for 
the  modern  period  of  European  civilisation,  as  distinguished 
from  the  ecclesiastically  and  theologically  determined  culture 
which  had  prevailed  up  to  that  time.  It  marks  the  great 
cleft  between  the  ancient  and  mediaeval  world  of  culture 
on  the  one  hand  and  the  modem  world  on  the  other.  The 
Reformation  had  but  pushed  ajar  the  door  to  the  modern 
world  and  then  seemed  in  surprise  and  fear  about  to  close  it 
again.  The  thread  of  the  Renaissance  was  taken  up  again 
only  in  the  Enlightenment.  The  stream  flowed  underground 
which  was  yet  to  fertilise  the  modern  world. 

We  are  here  mainly  concerned  to  note  the  breadth  and 
universality  of  the  movement.  It  was  a  transformation  of 
culture,  a  change  in  the  principles  underlying  civilisation, 
in  all  departments  of  life.  It  had  indeed,  as  one  of  its  most 
general  traits,  the  antagonism  to  ecclesiastical  and  theological 
authority.  Whatever  it  was  doing,  it  was  never  without  a 
sidelong  glance  at  religion.  That  was  because  the  alleged 
divine  right  of  churches  and  states  was  the  one  might  which 
it  seemed  everywhere  necessary  to  break.  The  conflict  with 
ecclesiasticism,  however,  was  taken  up  also  by  Pietism,  the 
other  great  spiritual  force  of  the  age.  This  was  in  spite  of 
the  fact  that  the  pietists'  view  of  religion  was  the  opposite 
of  the  rationalist  view.  Rationalism  was  characterised  by 
thorough-going  antagonism  to  supernaturalism  with  all  its 
consequences.  This  arose  from  its  zeal  for  the  natural  and 
the  human,  in  a  day  when  all  men,  defenders  and  assailants 


I.]  INTRODUCTION  27 

of  religion  alike,  accepted  the  dictum  that  what  was  human 
could  not  be  divine,  the  divine  must  necessarily  be  the  opposite 
of  the  human.  In  reality  this  general  trait  of  opposition  to 
religion  deceives  us.  It  is  superficial.  In  large  part  the 
rationalists  were  willing  to  leave  the  question  of  religion  on 
one  side  if  the  ecclesiastics  would  let  them  alone.  This  is 
true  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  pot-house  rationalism  of 
Germany  and  France  in  the  eighteenth  century  found  the 
main  butt  of  its  ridicule  in  the  priesthood  and  the  Church. 
On  its  sober  side,  in  the  studies  of  scholars,  in  the  bureaux  of 
statesmen,  in  the  laboratories  of  discoverers,  it  found  more 
solid  work.  It  accomplished  results  which  that  other  trivial 
aspect  must  not  hide  from  us. 

Troeltsch  first  in  our  own  day  has  given  us  a  satisfactory 
account  of  the  vast  achievement  of  the  movement  in  every 
department  of  human  life.^  It  annihilated  the  theological 
notion  of  the  State.  In  the  period  after  the  Thirty  Years' 
War  men  began  to  question  what  had  been  the  purpose  of  it 
all.  Diplomacy  freed  itself  from  Jesuitical  and  papal  notions. 
It  turned  preponderantly  to  commercial  and  economic  aims. 
A  secular  view  of  the  purpose  of  God  in  history  began  to 
prevail  in  all  classes  of  society.  The  Grand  Monarque  was 
ready  to  proclaim  the  divine  right  of  the  State  which  was 
himself.  Still,  not  until  the  period  of  his  dotage  did  that 
claim  bear  any  relation  to  what  even  he  would  have  called 
religion.  Publicists,  both  Catholic  and  Protestant,  sought 
to  recur  to  the  lex  naturce  in  contradistinction  with  the  old 
lex  divina.  The  natural  rights  of  man,  the  rights  of  the  people, 
the  rationally  conditioned  rights  of  the  State,  a  natural, 
prudential,  utilitarian  morality  interested  men.  One  of  the 
consequences  of  this  theory  of  the  State  was  a  complete 
alteration  in  the  thought  of  the  relation  of  State  and  Church. 
The  nature  of  the  Church  itself  as  an  empirical  institution 
in  the  midst  of  human  society  was  subjected  to  the  same 
criticism  with  the  State.  Men  saw  the  Church  in  a  new  Hght. 
As  the  State  was  viewed  as  a  kind  of  contract  in  men's  social 

1  Troeltsch,  Art.  'Aufklarung'  in  Herzog-Hauck.  Reahncyclopddie,  3  Aufl., 
Bd.  ii.,  s.  225f. 


28      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

interest,  so  the  Church  was  regarded  as  but  a  voluntary 
association  to  care  for  their  rehgious  interests.  It  was  to  be 
judged  according  to  the  practical  success  \\dth  which  it 
performed  this  function. 

Then  also,  in  the  economic  and  social  field  the  rational  spirit 
made  itself  felt.  Commerce  and  the  growth  of  colonies,  the 
extension  of  the  middle  class,  the  redistribution  of  wealth, 
the  growth  of  cities,  the  dependence  in  relations  of  trade  of 
one  nation  upon  another,  all  these  things  shook  the  ancient 
organisation  of  society.  The  industrial  system  grew  up  upon 
the  basis  of  a  naturalistic  theory  of  all  economic  relations. 
Unlimited  freedom  in  labour  and  in  the  use  of  capital  were 
claimed.  There  came  a  great  revolution  in  public  opinion 
upon  all  matters  of  morals.  The  ferocity  of  religious  wars, 
the  cruelty  of  religious  persecutions,  the  bigotry  and  abusive- 
ness  of  religious  controversies,  the  casuistry  of  the  confessional, 
these  all,  which,  only  a  generation  earlier,  had  been  taken 
by  long-suffering  humanity  as  if  they  had  been  matters  of 
course,  were  now  viewed  with  contrition  by  the  more  exalted 
spirits  and  with  contempt  and  embitterment  by  the  rest. 
Men  said,  if  religion  can  give  us  no  better  morality  than  this, 
it  is  high  time  we  looked  to  the  natural  basis  of  morality. 
Natural  morality  came  to  be  the  phrase  ever  on  the  lips  of 
the  leading  spirits.  Too  frequently  they  had  come  to  look 
askance  at  the  morality  of  those  who  alleged  a  supernatural 
sanction  for  that  which  they  at  least  enjoined  upon  others. 
We  come  in  this  field  also,  as  in  the  others,  upon  the  assertion 
of  the  human  as  nobler  and  more  beautiful  than  that  which 
had  by  the  theologians  been  alleged  to  be  divine.  The 
assertion  came  indeed  to  be  made  in  ribald  and  blasphemous 
forms,  but  it  was  not  without  a  great  measure  of  provocation. 

Then  there  was  the  altered  view  of  nature  which  came 
through  the  scientific  discoveries  of  the  age.  Bacon,  Coper- 
nicus, Kepler,  Galileo,  Gassendi,  Newton,  are  the  fathers 
of  the  modern  sciences.  These  are  the  men  who  brought 
new  worlds  to  our  knowledge  and  new  methods  to  our  use. 
That  the  sun  does  not  move  about  the  earth,  that  the  earth 
is  but  a  speck  in  space,  that  heaven  cannot  be  above  nor  hell 


L]  INTRODUCTION  29 

beneath,  these  are  thoughts  which  have  consequences.  Instead 
of  the  old  deductive  method,  that  of  the  mediaeval  Aristotel- 
ianism,  which  had  been  worse  than  fruitless  in  the  study  of 
nature,  men  now  set  out  with  a  great  enthusiasm  to  study  facts, 
and  to  observe  their  laws.  Modern  optics,  acoustics,  chemistry, 
geology,  zoology,  psychology  and  medicine,  took  their  rises 
within  the  period  of  which  we  speak.  The  influence  was 
indescribable.  Newton  might  maintain  his  own  simple  piety 
side  by  side,  so  to  say,  with  his  character,  as  a  scientific 
man,  though  even  he  did  not  escape  the  accusation  of  being 
a  Unitarian.  In  the  resistance  which  official  religion  offered 
at  every  step  to  the  advance  of  the  sciences,  it  is  small  wonder 
if  natures  less  placid  found  the  maintenance  of  their  ancestral 
faith  too  difficult.  Natural  science  was  deistic  with  Locke  and 
Voltaire,  it  was  pantheistic  in  the  antique  sense  with  Shaftes- 
bury, it  was  pantheistic-mystical  with  Spinoza,  spiritual- 
istic with  Descartes,  theistic  with  Leibnitz,  materialistic  with 
the  men  of  the  Encyclopaedia.  It  was  orthodox  with  nobody. 
The  miracle  as  traditionally  defined  became  impossible. 
At  all  events  it  became  the  millstone  around  the  neck  of  the 
apologists.  The  movement  went  to  an  extreme.  All  the 
evils  of  excess  upon  this  side  from  which  we  since  have  suffered 
were  forecast.  They  were  in  a  measure  called  out  by  the 
evils  and  errors  which  had  so  long  reigned  upon  the  other  side. 

Again,  in  the  field  of  the  writing  of  history  and  of  the 
critique  of  ancient  literatures,  the  principles  of  rational 
criticism  were  worked  out  and  applied  in  all  seriousness. 
Then  these  maxims  began  to  be  applied,  sometimes  timidly 
and  sometimes  in  scorn  and  shallowness,  to  the  sacred  history 
and  hterature  as  well.  To  claim,  as  the  defenders  of  the  faith 
were  fain  to  do,  that  this  one  department  of  history  was 
exempt,  was  only  to  tempt  historians  to  say  that  this  was 
equivalent  to  confession  that  we  have  not  here  to  do  with 
history  at  all. 

Nor  can  we  overlook  the  fact  that  the  seventeenth  and 
eighteenth  centuries  witnessed  a  great  philosophical  revival. 
Here  again  it  is  the  rationalist  principle  which  is  everywhere 
at  work.     The  observations  upon  nature,  the  new  feeling 


30      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT   [ch. 

concerning  man,  the  vast  complex  of  facts  and  impulses 
which  we  have  been  able  in  these  few  words  to  suggest, 
demanded  a  new  philosophical  treatment.  The  philosophy 
which  now  took  its  rise  was  no  longer  the  servant  of  theology. 
It  was,  at  most,  the  friend,  and  even  possibly  the  enemy,  of 
theology.  Before  the  end  of  the  rationalist  period  it  was  the 
master  of  theology,  though  often  wholly  indifferent  to  theo- 
logy, exactly  because  of  its  sense  of  mastery.  The  great 
philosophers  of  the  eighteenth  century,  Hume,  Berkeley, 
and  Kant,  belong  with  a  part  only  of  their  work  and 
tendency  to  the  rationalist  movement.  Still  their  work 
rested  upon  that  which  had  already  been  done  by  Spinoza 
and  Malebranche,  by  Hobbes  and  Leibnitz,  by  Descartes  and 
Bayle,  by  Locke  and  Wolff,  by  Voltaire  and  the  Encyclo- 
paedists. With  all  of  the  contrasts  among  these  men  there 
are  common  elements.  There  is  an  ever-increasing  antipathy 
to  the  thought  of  original  sin  and  of  supernatural  revelation, 
there  is  the  confidence  of  human  reason,  the  trust  in  the  will 
of  man,  the  enthusiasm  for  the  simple,  the  natural,  the  in- 
telligible and  practical,  the  hatred  of  what  was  scholastic 
and,  above  all,  the  repudiation  of  authority. 

All  these  elements  led,  toward  the  end  of  the  period,  to 
the  effort  at  the  construction  of  a  really  rational  theology. 
Leibnitz  and  Lessing  both  worked  at  that  problem.  How- 
ever, not  until  after  the  labours  of  Kant  was  it  possible  to 
utilise  the  results  of  the  rationalist  movement  for  the  recon- 
struction of  theology.  If  evidence  for  this  statement  were 
wanting,  it  could  be  abundantly  given  from  the  work  of 
Herder.  He  was  younger  than  Kant,  yet  the  latter  seems 
to  have  exerted  but  slight  influence  upon  him.  He  earnestly 
desired  to  reinterpret  Christianity  in  the  new  light  of  his  time, 
yet  perhaps  no  part  of  his  work  is  so  futile. 


Pietism 

Allusion  has  been  made  to  pietism.  We  have  no  need  to 
set  forth  its  own  achievements.  We  must  recur  to  it  merely 
as  one  of  the  influences  which  made  the  transition  from  the 


L]  INTRODUCTION  31 

century  of  rationalism  to  bear,  in  Germany,  an  aspect  different 
from  that  which  it  bore  in  any  other  land.  Pietism  had  at 
first,  much  in  common  with  rationahsm.  It  shared  with  the 
latter  its  opposition  to  the  whole  administration  of  reUgion 
established  by  the  State,  its  antagonism  to  the  social  dis- 
tinctions whichjprevailed,  its  individualism,  its  emphasis  upon 
the  practical.  It  was  part  of  a  general  religious  reaction 
against  ecclesiasticism,  as  were  also  Jansenism  in  France, 
and  Methodism  in  England,  and  the  Whitefieldian  revival  in 
America.  But,  through  the  character  of  Spener,  and  through 
the  pecuHarity  of  German  social  relations,  it  gained  an  in- 
fluence over  the  educated  classes,  such  as  Methodism  never 
had  in  England,  nor,  on  the  w^hole,  the  Great  Awakening 
in  America.  In  virtue  of  this,  German  pietism  was  able, 
among  influential  persons,  to  present  victorious  opposition 
to  the  merely  secular  tendencies  of  the  rationalistic  move- 
ment. In  no  small  measure  it  breathed  into  that  movement 
a  rehgious  quahty  which  in  other  lands  was  utterly  lacking. 
It  gave  to  it  an  ethical  seriousness  from  which  in  other 
places  it  had  too  often  set  itself  free. 

In  England  there  had  followed  upon  the  age  of  the  great 
religious  conflict  one  of  astounding  ebb  of  spiritual  interest. 
Men  turned  with  all  energy  to  the  political  and  economic 
interests  of  a  wholly  modem  civilisation.  They  retained, 
after  a  short  period  of  friction,  a  smug  and  latitudinarian 
orthodoxy,  which  Methodism  did  little  to  change.  In  France 
not  only  was  the  Huguenot  Church  annihilated,  but  the 
Jansenist  movement  was  savagely  suppressed.  The  tyranny 
of  the  Bourbon  State  and  the  corruption  of  the  GalHcan 
Church  which  was  so  deeply  identified  with  it  caused  the 
rationalist  movement  to  bear  the  trait  of  a  passionate  oppo- 
sition to  religion.  In  the  time  of  Pascal,  Jansenism  had 
a  moment  when  it  bade  fair  to  be  to  France  what  pietism 
was  to  Germany.  Later,  in  the  anguish  and  isolation  of 
the  conflict  the  movement  lost  its  poise  and  intellectual 
quality.  In  Germany,  even  after  the  temporary  alliance 
of  pietism  and  rationalism  against  the  Church  had  been 
transcended,  and   the  length  and  breadth  of  their  mutual 


32      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [en. 

antagonism  had  been  revealed,  there  remained  a  deep  mutual 
respect  and  salutary  interaction.  Obscurantists  and  senti- 
mentalists might  denounce  rationalism.  Vulgar  ranters  like 
Dippel  and  Barth  might  defame  religion.  That  had  little 
weight  as  compared  with  the  fact  that  Klopstock,  Hamann 
and  Herder,  Jacobi,  Goethe  and  Jean  Paul,  had  all  passed 
at  some  time  under  the  influence  of  pietism.  Lessing 
learned  from  the  Moravians  the  undogmatic  essence  of  re- 
ligion. Schleiermacher  was  bred  among  the  devoted  followers 
of  Zinzendorf.  Even  the  radicalism  of  Kant  retained  from 
the  teaching  of  his  pietistic  youth  the  stringency  of  its  ethic, 
the  sense  of  the  radical  evil  of  human  nature  and  of  the 
categorical  imperative  of  duty.  It  would  be  hard  to  find 
anything  to  surpass  his  testimony  to  the  purity  of  character 
and  spirit  of  his  parents,  or  the  beauty  of  the  home  life  in 
which  he  was  bred.  Such  facts  as  these  made  themselves  felt 
both  in  the  philosophy  and  in  the  poetry  of  the  age.  The 
rationalist  movement  itself  came  to  have  an  ethical  and 
spiritual  trait.  The  triviality,  the  morbidness  and  super- 
stition of  pietism  received  their  just  condemnation.  But 
among  the  leaders  of  the  nation  in  every  walk  of  life  were 
some  who  felt  the  drawing  to  deal  with  ethical  and  religious 
problems  in  the  untrammelled  fashion  which  the  century 
had  taught. 

We  may  be  permitted  to  try  to  show  the  meaning  of  pietism 
by  a  concrete  example.  No  one  can  read  the  correspondence 
between  the  youthful  Schleiermacher  and  his  loving  but 
mistaken  father,  or  again,  the  Hfelong  correspondence  of 
Schleiermacher  with  his  sister,  without  receiving,  if  he  has  any 
religion  of* his  own,  a  touching  impression  of  what  the  pietistic 
religion  meant.  The  father  had  long  before,  unknown  to 
the  son,  passed  through  the  torments  of  the  rational  assault 
upon  a  faith  which  was  sacred  to  him.  He  had  preached, 
through  years,  in  the  misery  of  contradiction  with  himself. 
He  had  rescued  his  drowning  soul  in  the  ark  of  the  most 
intolerant  confessional  orthodoxy.  In  the  crisis  of  his  son's 
Ufe  he  pitiably  concealed  these  facts.  They  should  have 
been  the  bond  of  sympathy.     The  son,  a  sorrowful  little 


L  INTRODUCTION  33 

motherless  boy,  was  sent  to  the  Moravian  school  at  Niesky, 
and  then  to  Barby.  He  was  to  escape  the  contamination 
of  the  universities,  and  the  woes  through  which  his  father  had 
passed.  Even  there  the  spirit  of  the  age  pursued  him.  The 
precocious  lad,  in  his  loneliness,  raised  every  question  which 
the  race  was  wrestling  with.  He  long  concealed  these  facts, 
dreading  to  wound  the  man  he  so  revered.  Then  in  a  burst 
of  filial  candour,  he  threw  himself  upon  his  father's  mercy, 
only  to  be  abused  and  measurelessly  condemned.  He  had 
his  way.  He  resorted  to  Halle,  turned  his  back  on  sacred 
things,  worked  in  titanic  fashion  at  everything  but  the  pro- 
blem of  religion.  At  least  he  kept  his  life  clean  and  his  soul 
sensitive  among  the  flagrantly  immoral  who  were  all  about 
him,  even  in  the  pietists'  own  university.  He  laid  the  foun- 
dations for  his  future  philosophical  construction.  He  bathed 
in  the  sentiments  and  sympathies,  poetic,  artistic  and  humani- 
tarian, of  the  romanticist  movement.  In  his  early  Berlin 
period  he  was  almost  swept  from  his  feet  by  its  flood.  He 
rescued  himself,  however,  by  his  rationalism  and  romanticism 
into  a  breadth  and  power  of  faith  which  made  him  the 
prophet  of  the  new  age.  By  him,  for  a  generation,  men 
like-minded  saved  their  souls.  x\s  one  reads,  one  realises  that 
it  was  the  pietists'  religion  which  saved  him,  and  which,  in 
another  sense,  he  saved.  His  recollections  of  his  instruction 
among  the  Herrnhuter  are  full  of  beauty  and  pathos.  His 
sister  never  advanced  a  step  upon  the  long  road  which  he 
travelled.  Yet  his  sympathy  with  her  remained  unimpaired. 
The  two  poles  of  the  life  of  the  age  are  visible  here.  The 
episode,  full  of  exquisite  personal  charm,  is  a  veritable 
miniature  of  the  first  fifty  years  of  the  movement  which 
we  have  to  record.  No  one  did  for  England  or  for  France 
what  Schleiermacher  had  done  for  the  Fatherland. 


Esthetic  Idealism 

Besides  pietism,  the  Germany  of  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century  possessed  still  another  foil  and  counterpoise  to  its 
decadent    rationalism.      Tliis    was    the    so-called    aesthetic- 


34      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

idealistic  movement,  which  shades  off  into  romanticism. 
The  debt  of  Schleiermacher  to  that  movement  has  been 
already  hinted  at.  It  was  the  revolt  of  those  who  had  this 
in  common  with  the  pietists,  that  they  hated  and  despised 
the  outworn  rationalism.  They  thought  they  wanted  no 
religion.  It  is  open  to  us  to  say  that  they  misunderstood 
religion.  It  was  this  misunderstanding  which  Schleier- 
macher sought  to  bring  home  to  them.  What  religion 
they  understood,  ecclesiasticism,  Roman  or  Lutheran, 
or  again,  the  banalities  and  fanaticisms  of  middle-class 
pietism,  they  despised.  Their  war  with  rationalism  was 
not  because  it  had  deprived  men  of  religion.  It  had  been 
equally  destructive  of  another  side  of  the  life  of  feeling,  the 
aesthetic.  Their  war  was  not  on  behalf  of  the  good,  it  was  in 
the  name  of  the  beautiful.  Rationalism  had  starved  the  soul, 
it  had  minimised  and  derided  feehng.  It  had  suppressed 
emotion.  It  had  been  fatal  to  art.  It  was  barren  of  poetry. 
It  had  had  no  sympathy  with  history  and  no  understanding 
of  history.  It  had  reduced  everything  to  the  process  by 
which  two  and  two  make  four.  The  pietists  said  that  the 
frenzy  for  reason  had  made  men  oblivious  of  the  element  of 
the  divine.  The  aesthetic  ideahsts  said  that  it  had  been  fatal 
to  the  element  of  the  human.  From  this  point  of  view  their 
movement  has  been  called  the  new  humanism.  The  glamour 
of  life  was  gone,  they  said.  Mystery  had  vanished.  And 
mystery  is  the  womb  of  every  art.  Rationalism  had  been 
absolutely  uncreative,  only  and  always  destructive.  Rous- 
seau had  earlier  uttered  this  wail  in  France,  and  had  greatly 
influenced  certain  minds  in  Germany.  Shelley  and  Keats 
were  saying  something  of  the  sort  in  England.  Even  as  to 
Wordsworth,  it  may  be  an  open  question  if  his  religion  was  not 
mainly  romanticism.  All  these  men  used  language  which  had 
been  conventionally  associated  with  religion,  to  describe  this 
other  emotion. 

Rationalism  had  ended  in  proving  deadly  to  ideals.  This 
was  true.  But  men  forgot  for  the  moment  how  glorious  an 
ideal  it  had  once  been  to  be  rational  and  to  assert  the 
rationality  of  the  imiverse.    Still  the  time  had  come  when. 


I.]  INTRODUCTION  35 

in  Germany  at  all  events,  the  great  cry  was,  '  back  to  the 
ideal.'  It  is  curious  that  men  always  cry  'back  '  when  they 
^lean  'foiwaid.'  J'or  it  was  not  the  old  idealism,  either 
rehgious  or  aesthetic,  which  they  were  seeking.  It  was  a  new 
one  in  which  the  sober  fruits  of  rationalism  should  find  place. 
Still,  for  the  moment,  as  we  have  seen,  the  air  was  full  of  the 
cry,  '  back  to  the  State  by  divine  right,  back  to  the  Church, 
back  to  the  Middle  Age,  back  to  the  beauty  of  classical  anti- 
quity.' The  poetry,  the  romance,  the  artistic  criticism  of 
this  movement  set  themselves  free  at  a  stroke  from  theo- 
logical bondage  and  from  the  externahty  of  conventional 
ethics.  It  shook  off  the  dust  of  the  doctrinaires.  It  ridi- 
culed the  petty  utilitarianism  which  had  been  the  vogue. 
It  had  such  an  horizon  as  men  had  never  dreamed  before. 
It  owed  that  horizon  to  the  rationalism  it  despised.  From 
its  new  elevation  it  surveyed  all  the  great  elements  of  the 
life  of  man.  It  saw  morals  and  religion,  language  and  society, 
along  with  art  and  itself,  as  the  free  and  unconscious  product 
through  the  ages,  of  the  vitality  of  the  human  spirit.  It 
must  be  said  that  it  neither  solved  nor  put  away  the  ancient 
questions.  Especially  through  its  one-sided  aestheticism  it 
veiled  that  element  of  dualism  in  the  world  which  Kant 
clearly  saw,  and  we  now  see  again,  after  a  century  which 
has  sometimes  leaned  to  easy  pantheism.  However,  it  led 
to  a  study  of  the  human  soul  and  of  all  its  activities,  which 
came  closer  to  living  nature  than  anything  which  the  world 
had  yet  seen. 

To  this  group  _of..9esthetic  idealists  belong,  not  to  mention 
lesser  names,  Lessing  and  Hamann  and  Winckelmann,  but 
above  all  Herder  and  Goethe.  Herder  was  surely  the  finest  ^i 
spirit  among  the  elder  contemporaries  of  Goethe.  Bitterly 
hostile  to  the  rationalists,  he  had  been  moved  by  Rousseau 
to  enthusiasm  for  the  free  creative  life  of  the  human  spirit. 
With  Lessing  he  felt  the  worth  of  every  art  in  and  for  itself,  and 
the  greatness  of  life  in  its  own  fulfilment.  He  sets  out  from 
the  analysis  of  the  poetic  and  artistic  powers,  the  appreciation 
of  which  seemed  to  him  to  be  the  key  to  the  understanding 
of  the  spiritual  world.     Then  first  he  approaches  the  analysis 


36      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [CH. 

of  the  ethical  and  reHgious  feeUng.  All  the  knowledge  and 
insight  thus  gained  he  gathers  together  into  a  history  of  the 
spiritual  life  of  mankind.  This  life  of  the  human  spirit  comes 
forth  everywhere  from  nature,  is  bound  to  nature.  It  con- 
stitutes one  whole  with  a  nature  which  the  devout  soul  calls 
God,  and  apprehends  within  itself  as  the  secret  of  all  that 
it  is  and  does.  Even  in  the  period  in  which  he  had  become 
passionately  Christian,  Herder  never  was  able  to  attain  to  a 
scientific  establishing  of  his  Christianity,  or  to  any  sense 
of  the  specific  aim  of  its  development.  He  felt  himself  to  be 
separated  from  Kant  by  an  impassable  gulf.  All  the  sharp 
antinomies  among  which  Kant  moved,  contrasts  of  that  which 
is  sensuous  with  that  which  is  reasonable,  of  experience  with 
pure  conception,  of  substance  and  form  in  thought,  of  nature 
and  freedom,  of  inclination  and  duty,  seemed  to  He/der 
grossly  exaggerated,  if  not  absolutely  false.  Sometimes 
Herder  speaks  as  if  the  end  of  life  were  simply  the  happiness 
which  a  man  gets  out  of  the  use  of  all  his  powers  and  out  of 
the  mere  fact  of  existence.  Deeper  is  Kant's  contention,  that 
the  true  aim  of  life  can  be  only  moral  culture,  even  inde- 
pendent of  happiness,  or  rather  one  must  find  his  noblest 
happiness  in  that  moral  culture. 

At  a  period  in  his  life  when  Herder  had  undergone  con- 
version to  court  orthodoxy  at  Biickeburg  and  threatened 
to  throw  away  that  for  which  his  life  had  stood,  he  was 
greatly  helped  by  Goethe.  The  identification  of  Herder  with 
Christianity  continued  to  be  more  deep  and  direct  than  that 
of  Goethe  ever  became.  Yet  Goethe  has  also  his  measure  of 
significance  for  our  theme.  If  he  steadied  Herder  in  his 
religious  experience,  he  steadied  others  in  their  poetical 
emotionalism  and  artistic  sentimentality,  which  were  fast 
becoming  vices  of  the  time.  The  classic  repose  of  his  spirit, 
his  apparently  unconscious  illustration  of  the  ancient  maxim, 
'  nothing  too  much,'  was  the  more  remarkable,  because  there 
were  few  influences  in  the  whole  gamut  of  human  life  to  which 
he  did  not  sooner  or  later  surrender  himself,  few  experiences 
which  he  did  not  seek,  few  areas  of  thought  upon  which  he 
did  not  enter.     Systems  and  theories  were  never  much  to  his 


I.]  INTRODUCTION  37 

mind.  A  fact,  even  if  it  were  inexplicable,  interested  him 
much  more.  To  the  evolution  of  formal  thought  in  his 
age  he  held  himself  receptive  rather  than  directing.  He 
kept,  to  the  last,  his  owti  manner  of  brooding  and  creating, 
within  the  limits  of  a  poetic  impressionableness  which  in- 
stinctively viewed  the  material  world  and  the  life  of  the  soul 
in  substantially  similar  fashion.  There  is  something  almost 
humorous  in  the  way  in  which  he  eagerly  appropriated  the 
results  of  the  philosophising  of  his  time,  in  so  far  as  he 
could  use  these  to  sustain  his  own  positions,  and  caustically 
rejected  those  which  he  could  not  thus  use.  He  soon  got  by 
heart  the  negative  lessons  of  Voltaire  and  found,  to  use  the  ) 
words  which  he  puts  into  the  mouth  of  Faust,  that  while  it 
freed  him  from  his  superstitions,  at  the  same  time  it  made 
the_ world  empty  and  dismal  beyond  endurance.  In  the 
mechanical  philosophy  which  presented  itself  in  the  Systime 
de  la  Nature  as  a  positive  substitute  for  his  lost  faith,  he 
foimd  only  that  which  filled  his  poet's  soul  with  horror. 
*  It  appeared  to  us,'  he  says,  '  so  grey,  so  Cimmerian  and  so 
dead  that  we  shuddered  at  it  as  at  a  ghost.  We  thought 
it  the  very  quintessence  of  old  age.  All  was  said  to  be 
necessary,  and  therefore  there  was  no  God.  Why  not  a 
necessity  for  a  God  to  take  its  place  among  the  other  neces- 
sities ! '  On  the  other  hand,  the  ordinary  teleological  theology, 
with  its  external  architect  of  the  world  and  its  externally 
determined  designs,  could  not  seem  to  Goethe  more  satis- 
factory than  the  mechanical  philosophy.  He  joined  for  a 
time  in  Rousseau's  cry  for  the  return  to  nature.  But  Goethe 
was  far  too  well  balanced  not  to  perceive  that  such  a  cry 
may  be  the  expression  of  a  very  artificial  and  sophisticated 
state  of  mind.  It  begins  indeed  in  the  desire  to  throw  off  that 
which  is  really  oppressive.  It  ends  in  a  fretful  and  reckless 
revolt  against  the  most  necessary  conditions  of  human  hfe. 
Goethe  lived  long  enough  to  see  in  France  that  dissolution 
of  all  authority,  whether  of  State  or  Church,  for  which  Rous- 
seau had  pined.  He  saw  it  result  in  the  return  of  a  portion 
of  mankind  to  what  we  now  believe  to  have  been  their  primi- 
tive state,  a  state  in  which  they  were  '  red  in  tooth  and  claw.' 


38      HISTORY  OP  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

It  was  not  that  paradisaic  state  of  love  and  innocence,  which, 
curiously  enough,  both  Rousseau  and  the  theologians  seem 
to  have  imagined  was  the  primitive  state. 

The  thought  of  the  discipline  and  renunciation  of  our  lower 
nature  in  order  to  the  realisation  of  a  higher  nature  of  man- 
kind is  written  upon  the  very  face  of  the  second  part  of 
Faust.  Certain  passages  in  Dichtung  und  Wahrheit  are  even 
more  famihar.  '  Our  physical  as  well  as  our  social  life, 
morality,  custom,  knowledge  of  the  world,  philosophy,  re- 
ligion, even  many  an  accidental  occurrence  in  our  daily  hfe, 
all  tell  us  that  we  must  renounce.'  '  Renunciation,  once  for 
all,  in  view  of  the  eternal,'  that  was  the  lesson  which  he  said 
made  him  feel  an  atmosphere  of  peace  breathed  upon  him. 
He  perceived  the  supreme  moral  significance  of  certain 
Christian  ideas,  especially  that  of  the  atonement  as  he 
interpreted  it.  '  It  is  altogether  strange  to  me,'  he  writes 
to  Jacobi,  '  that  I,  an  old  heathen,  should  see  the  cross 
planted  in  my  own  garden,  and  hear  Christ's  blood  preached 
without  its  offending  me.' 

Goethe's  quarrel  with  Christianity  was  due  to  two  causes. 
In  the  first  place,  it  was  due  to  his  viewing  Christianity  as 
mainly,  if  not  exclusively,  a  religion  of  the  other  world,  as  it 
has  been  called,  a  religion  whose  God  is  not  the  principle  of  all 
life  and  nature  and  for  which  nature  and  life  are  not  divine. 
In  the  second  place,  it  was  due  to  the  prominence  of  the 
negative  or  ascetic  element  in  Christianity  as  commonly 
presented,  to  the  fact  that  in  that  presentation  the  law  of 
self-sacrifice  bore  no  relation  to  the  law  of  self-realisation.  In 
both  of  these  respects  he  would  have  found  himself  much 
more  at  home  with  the  apprehension  of  Christianity  which 
we  have  inherited  from  the  nineteenth  century.  The  pro- 
gramme of  charity  which  he  outlines  in  the  Wanderjahre 
as  a  substitute  for  religion  would  be  taken  to-day,  so  far  as 
it  goes,  as  a  rather  moderate  expression  of  the  very  spirit  of 
the  Christian  religion. 


n.]  IDEALISTIC  PHILOSOPHY  39 


CHAPTER  II 

IDEALISTIC  PHILOSOPHY 

The  causes  which  we  have  named,  rehgious  and  aesthetic, 
as  well  as  purely  speculative,  led  to  such  a  revision  of 
philosophical  principles  in  Germany  as  took  place  in  no 
other  land.  The  new  idealistic  philosophy,  as  it  took  shape 
primarily  at  the  hands  of  Kant,  completed  the  dissolution  of  1 
the  old  rationalism.  It  laid  the  foundation  for  the  specu-' 
lative  thought  of  the  western  world  for  the  century  which 
was  to  come.  The  answers  which  aestheticism  and  pietism 
gave  to  rationalism  were  incomplete.  They  consisted  largely 
in  calling  attention  to  that  which  rationalism  had  overlooked. 
Kant's  ideahsm,  however^  met  the  intellectual  movement  on 
its  own  grounds.  It  triumphed  over  it  with  its  own  weapons. 
The  others  set  feeling  over  against  thought.  He  taught  men 
a  new  method  in  thinking.  The  others  put  emotion  over 
against  reason.  He  criticised  in  drastic  fashion  the  use  which 
had  been  made  of  reason.  He  inquired  into  the  nature  of 
reason.  He  vindicated  the  reasonableness  of  some  truths 
which  men  had  indeed  felt  to  be  indefeasibly  true,  but  which 
they  had  not  been  able  to  establish  by  reasoning. 

Kant 

Immanuel  Kant  was  born  in  1724  in  Konigsberg,  possibly  of 
remoter  Scottish  ancestry.  His  father  was  a  saddler,  as 
Melanchthon's  had  been  an  armourer  and  Wolff's  a  tanner. 
His  native  city  with  its  university  was  the  scene  of  his  whole 
life  and  labour.  He  was  never  outside  of  Prussia  except  for 
a  brief  interval  when  Konigsberg  belonged  to  Russia.     He 


40      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

was  a  German  professor  of  the  old  style.     Studying,  teaching, 
writing  books,  these  were  his  whole  existence.     He  was  the 
fourth  of  nine  children  of  a  devoted  pietist  household.     Two 
of  his  sisters  served  in  the  houses  of  friends.     The  consis- 
torial-rath  opened  the  way  to  the  university.    An  uncle  aided  v 
him  to  publish  his  first  books.     His  earlier  interest  was  in' 
the  natural  sciences.     He  was  slow  in  coming  to  promotion.] 
Only  after  1770  was  he  full  professor  of  logic  and  metaphysics.; 
In  1781  he  published  the  first  of  the  books  upon  which  rests 
his  world-wide    fame.      Nevertheless,   he    Hved    to    see   the 
triumph  of  his  philosophy  in  most  of  the  German  univer- 
sities.    His   subjects   are   abstruse,   his   style   involved.     It| 
never  occurred  to  him  to  make  the  treatment  of  his  themes 
easier  by  use  of  the  imagination.     He  had  but  a  modicum 
of  that  quality.     He  was  hostile  to   the  pride  of  intellect  | 
often    manifested    by   petty   rationalists.      He   was    almost 
equally   hostile   to   excessive   enthusiasm   in   religion.     The  | 
note  of  his  life,  apart  from  his  intellectual  power,  was  his 
ethical  seriousness.     He  was  in  conflict  with  ecclesiastical  i 
personages  and  out  of  sympathy  with  much  of  institutional! 
religion.     None  the  less,  he  was  in  his  own  way  one  of  the 
most   religious   of  men.     His   brief  conflict   with   Wollner's 
government  was  the  only  instance  in  which  his  peace  and 
public  honour  were  disturbed.     He  never  married.     He  died 
in  Konigsberg  in  1804.     He  had  been  for  ten  years  so  much 
enfeebled  that  his  death  was  a  merciful  release. 

Kant  used  the  word  '  critique  '  so  often  that  his  philosophy 
has  been  called  the  '  critical  philosophy.'  The  word  therefore] 
needs  an  explanation.  Kant  himself  distinguished  two  types 
of  philosophy,  which  he  called  the  dogmatic  and  critical  types. 
The  essence  of  a  dogmatic  philosophy  is  that  it  makes  belief 
to  rest  upon  knowledge.  Its  endeavour  is  to  demonstrate 
that  which  is  believed.  It  brings  out  as  its  foil  the  charac- 
teristically sceptical  philosophy.  This  esteems  that  the  proofs 
advanced  in  the  interest  of  belief  are  inadequate.  The 
belief  itself  is  therefore  an  illusion.  The  essence  of  a  critical 
philosophy,  on  the  other  hand,  consists  in  this,  that  it  makes 
a  distinction  between  the  functions  of  knowing  and  believing.\ 


n.]  IDEALISTIC  PHILOSOPHY  41 

It  distinguishes  between  the  perception  of  that  which  is  in 
accordance  with  natural  law  and  the  understanding  of  the 
moral  meaning  of  things.^  Kant  thus  uses  his  word  critique 
in  accordance  with  the  strict  etymological  meaning  of  the 
root.  He  seeks  to  make  a  clear  separation  between  the 
provinces  of  belief  and  knowledge,  and  thus  to  find  an  adjust- 
ment of  their  claims.  Of  an  object  of  belief  we  may  indeed 
say  that  we  know  it.  Yet  we  must  make  clear  to  ourselves 
that  we  know  it  in  a  different  sense  from  that  in  which  we 
know  physical  fact.  Faith,  since  it  does  not  spring  from 
the  pure  reason,  cannot  indeed,  as  the  old  dogmatisms,  both 
philosophical  and  theological,  have  united  in  asserting,  be 
demonstrated  by  the  reason.  Equally  it  cannot,  as  scepticism 
has  declared,  be  overthrown  by  the  pure  reason. 

The  ancient  positive  dogmatism  had  been  the  idealisticl 
philosophy  of  Plato  and  Aristotle.     The  old  negative  dog- 
matism had  been  the  materialism  of  the  Epicureans.     To| 
Plato  the  world  was  the  realisation  of  ideas.     Ideas,  spiritual 
entities,  were  the  counterparts   and   necessary  antecedents 
of  the  natural  objects  and  actual  facts  of  life.     To  the  Epi-i 
cureans,  on  the  other  hand,  there  are  only  material  bodies) 
and  natural  laws.     There  are  no  ideas  or  purposes.     In  the 
footsteps  of  the  former  moved  all  the  scholastics  of  the  Middle 
Age,  and  again,  even  Locke  and  Leibnitz  in  their  so-called 
'natural   theology.'    In   the  footsteps  of  the  latter  moved 
the  men  who  had  made  materialism  and  scepticism  to  be 
the  dominant  philosophy  of  France  in  the  latter  half  of  the 
eighteenth  century.      The  aim  of  Kant  was  to  resolve  this  ) 
age-long  contradiction.     Free,  unprejudiced  investigation  of 
the   facts   and  laws   of    the   phenomenal    world    can    never 
touch  the  foundations  of  faith.     Natural  science  can  lead 
to  the  knowledge  only  of  the  realm  of  the  laws  of  things. 
It  cannot  give  us  the  inner   moral    sense   of    those  things. 
To  speak  of  the  purposes  of  nature  as  men  had  done  was   / 
absurd.     Natural   theology,   as  men  had  talked  of  it,   was 
impossible.     What  science  can  give  is  a  knowledge  of  the 
facts  about  us  in  the  world,  of  the  growth  of  the  cosmos,  of  j 

1  Paulsen,  Kant,  s.  2. 


42       HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT  [ch. 

the  development  of  life,  of  the  course  of  history,  all  viewed 
as  necessary  sequences  of  cause  and  effect. 

On  the  other  hand,  with  the  idealists,  Kant  is  fully  per- 
suaded that  there  is  a  meaning  in  things  and  that  we  can 
know  it.  There  is  a  sense  in  life.  With  immediate  certainty 
we  set  moral  good  as  the  absolute  aim  in  life.  This  is  done, 
however,  not  through  the  pure  reason  or  by  scientific  think- 
ing, but  primarily  through  the  will,  or  as  Kant  prefers  to 
call  it,  the  practical  reason.  What  he  means  by  the  practical  J 
reason  is  the  intelligence,  the  will  and  the  affections  operating  / 
together ;  that  is  to  say,  the  whole  man,  and  not  merely 
his  intellect,  directed  to  those  problems  upon  which,  in  sym- 
pathy and  moral  reaction,  the  whole  man  must  be  directed 
and  upon  which  the  pure  reason,  the  mere  faculty  of  ratio- 
cination, does  not  adequately  operate.  In  the  practical 
reason  the  will  is  the  central  thing.  The  will  is  that  faculty 
of  man  to  which  moral  magnitudes  appeal.  It  is  with  moral 
magnitudes  that  the  will  is  primarily  concerned.  The  pure 
reason  may  operate  without  the  will  and  the  affections. 
The  will,  as  a  source  of  knowledge,  never  works  without  the 
intelligence  and  the  affections.  But  it  is  the  will  which  alone  j) 
judges  according  to  the  predicates  good  and  evil.  The  pure 
reason  judges  according  to  the  predicates  true  and  false.  It 
is  the  practical  reason  which  ventures  the  credence  that 
moral  worth  is  the  supreme  worth  in  life.  It  then  confirms 
this  ventured  credence  in  a  manifold  experience  that  yields  a 
certainty  with  which  no  certainty  of  objects  given  in  the 
senses  is  for  a  moment  to  be  compared.  We  know  that  which 
we  have  believed.  We  know  it  as  well  as  that  two  and  two 
make  four.  Still  we  do  not  know  it  in  the  same  way.  Nor 
can  we  bring  knowledge  of  it  to  others  save  through  an  act 
of  freedom  on  their  part,  which  is  parallel  to  the  original  act 
of  freedom  on  our  own  part. 

How  can  these  two  modes  of  thought  stand  related  the 
one  to  the  other  ?  Kant's  answer  is  that  they  correspond  to 
the  distinction  between  two  worlds,  the  world  of  sense  and 
the  transcendental  or  supersensible  world.  The  pure  and  the 
practical  reason  are  the  faculties  of  man  for  dealing  with 


n.]  IDEALISTIC  PHILOSOPHY  43 

these  two  worlds  respectively,  the  phenomenal  and  the 
noumenal.  The  world  which  is  the  object  of  scientific  in- 
vestigation is  not  the  actuality  itself.  This  is  true  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  to  the  common  man  the  material  and  sensible 
is  always,  as  he  would  say,  the  real.  On  the  contrary,  in 
Kant's  opinion  the  material  world  is  only  the  presentation! 
to  our  senses  of  something  deeper,  of  which  our  senses  are  no  i 
judge.  The  reality  lies  behind  this  sensible  presentation 
and  appearance.  The  world  of  religious  belief  is  the  world 
of  this  transcendent  reality.  The  spirit  of  man,  which  is 
not  pure  reason  only,  but  moral  will  as  well,  recognises  itself 
also  as  part  of  this  reality.  It  expresses  the  essence  of  that 
mysterious  reahty  in  terms  of  its  own  essence.  Its  own 
essence  as  free  spirit  is  the  highest  aspect  of  reality  of  which 
it  is  aware.  It  may  be  unconscious  of  the  symbolic  nature 
of  its  language  in  describing  that  which  is  higher  than  any- 
thing which  we  know,  by  the  highest  which  we  do  know.  Yet, 
granting  that,  and  supposing  that  it  is  not  a  contradiction  to 
attempt  a  description  of  the  transcendent  at  all,  there  is  no 
description  which  carries  us  so  far. 

This  series  of  ideas  was  perhaps  that  which  gave  to  Kant's 
philosophy  its  immediate  and  immense  effect  upon  the  minds 
of  men  wearied  with  the  endless  strife  and  insoluble  contra- 
diction of  the  dogmatic  and  sceptical  spirits.  We  may 
disagree  with  much  else  in  the  Kantian  system.  Even  here 
we  may  say  that  we  have  not  two  reasons,  but  only  two 
functionings  of  one.  We  have  not  two  worlds.  The  philo- 
sophical myth  of  two  worlds  has  no  better  standing  than 
the  religious  myth  of  two  worlds.  We  have  two  character- 
istic aspects  of  one  and  the  same  world.  These  perfectly 
interpenetrate  the  one  the  other,  if  we  may  help  ourselves 
with  the  language  of  space.  Each  is  everywhere  present. 
Furthermore,  these  actions  of  reason  and  aspects  of  world 
shade  into  one  another  by  imperceptible  degrees.  Almost 
all  functionings  of  reason  have  something  of  the  qualities 
of  both.  However,  when  all  is  said,  it  was  of  greatest  worth 
to  have  had  these  two  opposite  poles  of  thought  brought 
clearly  to  mind.     The  dogmatists,  in  the  interest  of  faith, 


44    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT      [ca 

were  resisting  at  every  step  the  progress  of  the  sciences, 
feeUng  that  that  progress  was  inimical  to  faith.  The  de- 
votees of  science  were  saying  that  its  processes  were  of 
universal  validity,  its  conclusions  irresistible,  the  gradual 
dissolution  of  faith  was  certain.  Kant  made  plain  that 
neither  party  had  the  right  to  such  conclusions.  Each  was 
attempting  to  apply  the  processes  appropriate  to  one  form 
of  rational  activity  within  the  sphere  which  belonged  to  the 
other.  Nothing  but  confusion  could  result.  The  religious 
man  has  no  reason  to  be  jealous  of  the  advance  of  the  sciences. 
The  interests  of  faith  itself  are  furthered  by  such  investigation. 
Illusions  as  to  fact  which  have  been  mistakenly  identified 
with  faith  are  thus  done  away.  Nevertheless,  its  own  eternal 
right  is  assured  to  faith.  With  it  lies  the  interpretation  of 
the  facts  of  nature  and  of  history,  whatsoever  these  facts 
may  be  found  to  be.  With  the  practical  reason  is  the  inter- 
pretation of  these  facts  according  to  their  moral  worth,  a 
worth  of  which  the  pure  reason  knows  nothing  and  scientific 
investigation  reveals  nothing. 

Here  was  a  deliverance  not  unlike  that  which  the  Refor- 
mation had  brought.  The  mingling  of  Aristotelianism  and 
reHgion  in  the  scholastic  theology  Luther  had  assailed. 
Instead  of  assent  to  human  dogmas  Luther  had  the  imme- 
diate assurance  of  the  heart  that  God  was  on  his  side.  And 
what  is  that  but  a  judgment  of  the  practical  reason,  the 
response  of  the  heart  in  man  to  the  spiritual  universe  ?  It 
is  given  in  experience.  It  is  not  mediated  by  argument.  It 
cannot  be  destroyed  by  syllogism.  It  needs  no  confir- 
mation from  science.  It  is  capable  of  combination  with  any 
of  the  changing  interpretations  which  science  may  put  upon 
the  outward  universe.  The  Reformation  had,  however,  not 
held  fast  to  its  great  truth.  It  had  gone  back  to  the  old 
scholastic  position.  It  had  rested  faith  in  an  essentially 
rationalistic  manner  upon  supposed  facts  in  nature  and 
alleged  events  of  history  in  connection  with  the  revelation. 
It  had  thus  jeopardised  the  whole  content  of  faith,  should 
these  supposed  facts  of  nature  or  events  in  history  be  at  any 
time  disproved.     Men  had  made  faith  to  rest  upon  statements 


u.]  IDEALISTIC  PHILOSOPHY  46 

of  Scripture,  alleging  such  and  such  facts  and  events.  They 
did  not  recognise  these  as  the  naive  and  childlike  assumptions 
concerning  nature  and  history  which  the  authors  of  Scripture 
would  naturally  have.  WTien,  therefore,  these  statements 
began  with  the  progress  of  the  sciences  to  be  disproved,  the 
defenders  of  the  faith  presented  always  the  feeble  spectacle  of 
being  driven  from  one  form  of  evidence  to  another,  as  the  old 
were  in  turn  destroyed.  The  assumption  was  rife  at  the  end 
of  the  eighteenth  century  that  Christianity  was  discredited 
in  the  minds  of  all  free  and  reasonable  men.  Its  tenets 
were  incompatible  with  that  which  enlightened  men  infallibly 
knew  to  be  true.  It  could  be  no  long  time  until  the  hollow- 
ness  and  sham  would  be  patent  to  all.  Even  the  interested 
and  the  ignorant  would  be  compelled  to  give  it  up.  Of 
course,  the  invincibly  devout  in  every  nation  felt  of  instinct 
that  this  was  not  true.  They  felt  that  there  is  an  inexpug- 
nable truth  of  religion.  Still  that  was  merely  an  intuition  of 
their  hearts.  They  were  right.  But  they  were  unable  to 
prove  that  they  were  right,  or  even  to  get  a  hearing  with 
many  of  the  cultivated  of  their  age.  To  Kant  we  owe  the 
debt,  that  he  put  an  end  to  this  state  of  things.  He  made 
the  real  evidence  for  religion  that  of  the  moral  sense,  of  the 
conscience  and  hearts  of  men  themselves.  The  real  ground 
of  religious  conviction  is  the  religious  experience.  He  thus 
set  free  both  science  and  religion  from  an  embarrassment 
under  which  both  laboured,  and  by  which  both  had  been 
injured. 

Kant  parted  company  with  the  empirical  philosophy  which 
had  held  that  all  knowledge  arises  from  without,  comes  from 
experienced  sensations,  is  essentially  perception.  This  theory 
had  not  been  able  to  explain  the  fact  that  human  experience 
always  conforms  to  certain  laws.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
philosophy  of  so-called  innate  ideas  had  sought  to  derive  all 
knowledge  from  the  constitution  of  the  mind  itself.  It  left 
out  of  consideration  the  dependence  of  the  mind  upon  ex- 
perience. It  tended  to  confound  the  creations  of  its  o^vn 
speculation  with  reality,  or  rather,  to  claim  correspondence 
with  fact  for  statements  which  had  no  warrant  in  experience. 


46    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT      [ch. 

There  was  no  limit  to  which  this  speculative  process  might 
not  be  pushed.  By  this  process  the  mediaeval  theologians, 
with  all  gravity,  propounded  the  most  absurd  speculations 
concerning  nature.  By  this  process  men  made  the  most 
astonishing  declarations  upon  the  basis,  as  they  supposed,  of 
revelation.  They  made  allegations  concerning  history  and 
the  religious  experience  which  the  most  rudimentary  know- 
ledge of  history  or  reflection  upon  consciousness  proved  to 
be  quite  contrary  to  fact. 

Both  empiricism  and  the  theory  of  innate  ideas  had  agreed 
in  regarding  all  knowledge  as  something  given,  from  without 
or  from  within.  The  knowing  mind  was  only  a  passive 
recipient  of  impressions  thus  imparted  to  it.  It  was  as  wax 
under  the  stylus,  tabula  rasa,  clean  paper  waiting  to  be 
written  upon.  Kant  departed  from  this  radically.  He 
declared  that  all  cognition  rests  upon  the  union  of_themind'j 
activity  with  its  receptivity.  The  material  of  thought,  or 
at  least  some  of  the  materials  of  thought,  must  be  given 
us  in  the  multiformity  of  our  perceptions,  through  what  we 
call  experience  from  the  outer  world.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
formation  of  this  material  into  knowledge  is  the  work  of  the 

(activity  of  our  own  minds.  Knowledge  is  the  result  of  the 
systematising  of  experience  and  of  reflection  upon  it.  This 
activity  of  the  mind  takes  place  always  in  accordance  with 
the  mind's  own  laws.  Kant  held  thus  to  the  absolute  de- 
pendence of  knowledge  upon  material  supplied  in  experience. 
He  compared  himself  to  Copernicus  who  had  taught  men 
that  they  themselves  revolved  about  a  central  fact  of  the 
universe.  They  had  supposed  that  the  facts  revolved  about 
them.  The  central  fact  of  the  intellectual  world  is  ex- 
perience. This  experience  seems  to  be  given  us  in  the  forms 
of  time  and  space  and  cause.  These  are  merely  forms  of  the 
V  mind's  own  activity.  It  is  not  possible  for  us  to  know  *  the 
■^  thing  in  itself,'  the  Ding-an-sich  in  Kant's  phrase,  which 
is  the  external  factor  in  any  sensation  or  perception.  We 
cannot  distinguish  that  external  factor  from  the  contribution 
to  it,  as  it  stands  in  our  perception,  which  our  own  minds 
have  made.     If  we  cannot  do  that  even  for  ourselves,  how 


n.}  IDEALISTIC  PHILOSOPHY  47 

much  less  can  we  do  it  for  others !  It  is  the  subject,  the 
thinking  being  who  says  '  I,'  which,  by  means  of  its  charac- 
teristic and  necessary  active  processes,  in  the  perception  of 
things  under  the  forms  of  time  and  space,  converts  the  chaotic 
material  of  knowledge  into  a  regular  and  ordered  world  of 
reasoned  experience.  In  this  sense  the  understanding  itself 
imposes  laws,  if  not  upon  nature,  yet,  at  least,  upon  nature 
as  we  can  ever  know  it.  There  is  thus  in  Kant's  philosophy 
a  sceptical  aspect.  Knowledge  is  limited  to  phenomena. 
We  cannot  by  pure  reason  know  anything  of  the  world  which 
lies  beyond  experience.  This  thought  had  been  put  forth 
by  Locke  and  Berkeley,  and  by  Hume  also,  in  a  different  way. 
But  with  Kant  this  scepticism  was  not  the  gist  of  his  philo- 
sophy. It  was  urged  rather  as  the  basis  of  the  unconditioned 
character  which  he  proposed  to  assert  for  the  practical 
reason.  Kant's  scepticism  is  therefore  very  different  from 
that  of  Hume.  It  does  not  militate  against  the  profoundest 
religious  conviction.  Yet  it  prepared  the  way  for  some  of 
the  just  claims  of  modern  agnosticism. 

According  to  Kant,  it  is  as  much  the  province  of  the  prac- 
tical reason  to  lay  down  laws  for  action  as  it  is  the  province 
of  pure  reason  to  determine  the  conditions  of  thought,  though 
the  practical  reason  can  define  only  the  form  of  action  which 
shall  be  in  the  spirit  of  duty.  It  cannot  present  duty  to  us 
as  an  object  of  desire.  Desire  can  be  only  a  form  of  self-love. 
In  the  end  it  reckons  with  the  advantage  of  having  done  one's 
duty.  It  thus  becomes  selfish  and  degraded.  The  identi- 
fication of  duty  and  interest  was  particularly  offensive  to 
•Kant.  He  was  at  war  with  every  form  of  hedonism.  To  do 
one's  duty  because  one  expects  to  reap  advantage  is  not  to 
have  done  one's  duty.  The  doing  of  duty  in  this  spirit  simply 
resolves  itself  into  a  subtler  and  more  pervasive  form  of 
selfishness.  He  castigates  the  popular  presentation  of  religion 
as  fostering  this  same  fault.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  a 
trait  of  rigorism  in  Kant,  a  survival  of  the  ancient  dualism, 
which  was  not  altogether  consistent  with  the  implications  of 
his  own  philosophy.  This  philosophy  afforded,  as  we  have 
seen,  the  basis  for  a  monistic  view  of  the  universe.     But  to 


48      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

his  mind  the  natural  inclinations  of  man  are  opposed  to_good 
conscience  and  sound  reasQBjL  He  had  contempt  for  the 
shallow  optimism  of  his  time,  according  to  which  the  nature 
of  man  was  all  good,  and  needed  only  to  be  allowed  to  run  its 
natural  course  to  produce  highest  ethical  results.  He  does 
not  seem  to  have  penetrated  to  the  root  of  Rousseau's  fallacy, 
the  double  sense  in  which  he  constantly  used  the  words  'nature' 
and  '  natural.'  Otherwise,  Kant  would  have  been  able  to  re- 
pudiate the  preposterous  doctrine  of  Rousseau,  without  him- 
self falling  back  upon  the  doctrine  of  the  radical  evil  of  human 
nature.  In  this  doctrine  he  is  practically  at  one  with  the 
popular  teaching  of  his  own  pietistic  background,  and  with 
Calvinism  as  it  prevailed  with  many  of  the  religiously-minded 
of  his  day.  In  its  extreme  statements  this  latter  reminds  one 
of  the  pagan  and  oriental  dualisms  which  so  long  ran  parallel 
to  the  development  of  Christian  thought  and  so  profoundly 
influenced  it. 

Kant's  system  is  not  at  one  with  itself  at  this  point. 
According  to  him  the  natural  inclinations  of  men  are  such  as 
to  produce  a  never-ending  struggle  between  duty  and  desire. 
To  desire  to  do  a  thing  made  him  suspicious  that  he  was  not 
actuated  by  the  pure  spirit  of  duty  in  doing  it.  The  sense  in 
which  man  may  be  in  his  nature  both  a  child  of  God,  and,  at 
the  same  time,  part  of  the  great  complex  of  nature,  was  not 
yet  clear  either  to  Kant  or  to  his  opponents.  His  pessimism 
was  a  reflection  of  his  moral  seriousness.  Yet  it  failed  to 
reckon  with  that  which  is  yet  a  glorious  fact.  One  of  the 
chief  results  of  doing  one's  duty  is  the  gradual  escape  from 
the  desire  to  do  the  contrary.  It  is  the  gradual  fostering  by 
us,  the  ultimate  dominance  in  us,  of  the  desire  to  do  that 
duty.  Even  to  have  seen  one's  duty  is  the  dawning  in  us  of 
this  high  desire.  In  the  lowest  man  there  is  indeed  the  super- 
ficial desire  to  indulge  his  passions.  There  is  also  the  latent 
longing  to  be  conformed  to  the  good.  There  is  the  sense 
that  he  fulfils  himself  then  only  when  he  is  obedient  to  the 

I  good.  One  of  the  great  facts  of  spiritual  experience  is  this 
gradual,  or  even  sudden,  inversion  of  standard  within  us. 
We  do  really  cease  to  desire  the  things  which  are  against 


n.]  IDEALISTIC  PHILOSOPHY  49 

right  reason  and  conscience.  We  come  to  desire  the  good, 
even  if  it  shall  cost  us  pain  and  sacrifice  to  do  it.  Paul  could 
write  :  '  When  I  would  do  good,  evil  is  present  with  me.' 
But,  in  the  vividness  of  his  identification  of  his  willing  self 
with  his  better  self  against  his  sinning  self,  he  could  also 
write  :  '  So  then  it  is  no  more  I  that  do  the  sin.'  Das  radicate 
Bose  of  human  nature  is  less  radical  than  Kant  supposed,  and 
'  the  categorical  imperative  '  of  duty  less  externally  categorical 
than  he  alleged.  Still  it  is  the  great  merit  of  Kant's  philo- 
sophy to  have  brought  out  with  all  possible  emphasis,  not 
merely  as  against  the  optimism  of  the  shallow,  but  as  against 
the  hedonism  of  soberer  people,  that  our  life  is  a  conflict 
between  inclination  and  duty.  The  claims  of  duty  are  the 
higher  ones.  They  are  mandatory,  absolute.  We  do  our 
duty  whether  or  not  we  superficially  desire  to  do  it.  We 
do  our  duty  whether  or  not  we  foresee  advantage  in  having 
done  it.  We  should  do  it  if  we  foresaw  with  clearness  dis- 
advantage. We  should  find  our  satisfaction  in  having  done 
it,  even  at  the  cost  of  all  our  other  satisfactions.  There  is  a 
.must  which  is  oyer  and  above  all  our  desires.  This  is  what 
Kant  really  means  by  the  categoricaljimperative.  Neverthe- 
less, his  statement  comes  in  conflict  with  the  principle  of 
freedom,  which  is  one  of  the  most  fundamental  in  his  system. 
The  phrases  above  used  only  eddy  about  the  one  point  which 
is  to  be  held  fast.  There  may  be  that  in  the  universe  which 
destroys  the  man  who  does  not  conform  to  it,  but  in  the  last 
analysis  he  is  self -destroyed,  that  is,  he  chooses  not  to  conform. 
If  he  is  saved,  it  is  because  he  chooses  thus  to  conform.  Man 
would  be  then  most  truly  man  in  resisting  that  which  would 
merely  overpower  him,  even  if  it  were  goodness.  Of  course, 
there  can  be  no  goodness  w^hich  overpowers.  There  can  be 
no  goodness  which  is  not  willed.  Nothing  can  be  a  motive 
except  through  awakening  our  desire.  That  which  one 
desires  is  never  wholly  external  to  oneself. 

According  to  Kant,  morality  becomes  religion  when  that 
which  the  former  shows  to  be  the  end  of  man  is  conceived 
also  to  be  the  end  of  the  supreme  law-giver,  God.  Religion 
is  the  recognition  of  our  duties  as  divine  commands.     The 


60      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

distinction  between  revealed  and  natural  religion  is  stated 
thus :  In  the  former  we  know  a  thing  to  be  a  divine  com- 
mand before  we  recognise  it  as  our  duty.  In  the  latter  we 
know  it  to  be  our  duty  before  we  recognise  it  as  a  divine 
command.  Religion  may  be  both  natural  and  revealed.  Its 
tenets  may  be  such  that  man  can  be  conceived  as  arriving  at 
them  by  unaided  reason.  But  he  would  thus  have  arrived 
at  them  at  a  later  period  in  the  evolution  of  the  race.  Hence 
revelation  might  be  salutary  or  even  necessary  for  certain 
times  and  places  without  being  essential  at  all  times  or,  for 
that  matter,  a  permanent  guarantee  of  the  truth  of  religion. 
There  is  nothing  here  which  is  new  or  original  with  Kant. 
This  Hne  of  reasoning  was  one  by  which  men  since  Lessing 
had  helped  themselves  over  certain  difficulties.  It  is  cited  only 
to  show  how  Kant,  too,  failed  to  transcend  his  age  in  some 
matters,  although  he  so  splendidly  transcended  it  in  others. 

The  orthodox  had  immemorially  asserted  that  revelation 
imparted  information  not  otherwise  attainable,  or  not  then 
attainable.  The  rationalists  here  allege  the  same.  Kant 
is  held  fast  in  this  view.  Assuredly  what  revelation  imparts 
is  not  information  of  any  sort  whatsoever,  not  even  infor- 
mation concerning  God.  What  revelation  imparts  is  God 
himself,  through  the  will  and  the  affection,  the  practical 
reason.  Revelation  is  experience,  not  instruction.  The 
revealers  are  those  who  have  experienced  God,  Jesus  the 
foremost  among  them.  They  have  experienced  God,  whom 
then  they  have  manifested  as  best  they  could,  but  far  more 
significantly  in  what  they  were  than  in  what  they  said.  There 
is  surely  the  gravest  exaggeration  of  what  is  statutory  and 
external  in  that  which  Kant  says  of  the  relation  of  ethics 
and  religion.  How  can  we  know  that  to  be  a  command  of 
God,  which  does  not  commend  itself  in  our  own  heart  and 
conscience  ?  The  traditionalist  would  have  said,  by  docu- 
ments miraculously  confirmed.  It  was  not  in  consonance 
with  his  noblest  ideas  for  Kant  to  say  that.  On  the  other 
hand,  that  which  I  perceive  to  be  my  duty  I,  as  religious  man, 
feel  to  be  a  command  of  God,  whether  or  not  a  mandate  of 
God  to  that  effect  can  be  adduced.     ^Vhether  an  alleged 


n.]  IDEALISTIC  PHILOSOPHY  51 

revelation  from  God  inculcates  such  a  truth  or  duty  may  be 
incidental.  In  a  sense  it  is  accidental.  The  content  of  all 
historic  revelation  is  conditioned  in  the  circumstances  of  the 
man  to  whom  the  revelation  is  addressed.  It  is  clear  that 
the  whole  matter  of  revelation  is  thus  apprehended  by  Kant 
with  more  externality  than  we  should  have  believed.  His 
thought  is  still  essentially  archaic  and  dualistic.  He  is, 
therefore,  now  and  then  upon  the  point  of  denying  that  such 
a  thing  as  revelation  is  possible.  The  very  idea  of  revelation, 
in  this  form,  does  violence  to  his  fundamental  principle  of  the 
autonomy  of  the  human  reason  and  will.  At  many  points 
in  his  reflection  it  is  transparently  clear  that  nothing  can 
ever  come  to  a  man,  or  be  given  forth  by  him,  which  is  not 
creatively  shaped  by  himself.  As  regards  revelation,  how- 
ever, Kant  never  frankly  took  that  step.  The  imphcations  of 
his  own  system  would  have  led  him  to  that  step.  They  led 
to  an  idea  of  revelation  which  was  psychologically  in  har- 
mony with  the  assumptions  of  his  system,  and  historically 
could  be  conceived  as  taking  place  without  the  interjection 
of  the  miraculous  in  the  ordinary  sense.  If  the  divine  reve- 
lation is  to  be  thought  as  taking  place  within  the  human 
spirit,  and  in  consonance  with  the  laws  of  all  other  experience, 
then  the  human  spirit  must  itself  be  conceived  as  standing  in 
such  relation  to  the  divine  that  the  eternal  reason  may  express 
and  reveal  itself  in  the  regular  course  of  the  mind's  own 
activity.  Then  the  manifold  moral  and  religious  ideals  of 
mankind  in  all  history  must  take  their  place  as  integral 
factors  also  in  the  progress  of  the  divine  revelation. 

When  we  come  to  the  more  specific  topics  of  his  rehgious 
teaching,  freedom,  immortahty,  God,  Kant  is  prompt  to 
assert  that  these  cannot  be  objects  of  theoretical  knowledge. 
Insoluble  contradictions  arise  whenever  a  proof  of  them  is 
attempted.  If  an  object  of  faith  could  be  demonstrated  it 
would  cease  to  be  an  object  of  faith.  It  would  have  been 
brought  down  out  of  the  transcendental  world.  Were  God 
to  us  an  object  among  other  objects,  he  would  cease  to  be  a 
God.  Were  the  soul  a  demonstrable  object  like  any  other 
object,  it  would  cease  to  be  the  transcendental  aspect  of 


52      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

ourselves.  Kant  makes  short  work  of  the  so-called  proofs  for 
the  existence  of  God  which  had  done  duty  in  the  scholastic 
theology.  With  subtilty,  sometimes  also  with  bitter  irony, 
he  shows  that  they  one  and  all  assume  that  which  they  set 
out  to  prove.  They  are  theoretically  insufficient  and  prac- 
tically unnecessary.  They  have  such  high-sounding  names — 
the  ontological  argument,  the  cosmological,  the  physico- 
theological — that  almost  in  spite  of  ourselves  we  bring  a 
reverential  mood  to  them.  They  have  been  set  forth  with 
solemnity  by  such  redoubtable  thinkers  that  there  is  something 
almost  startling  in  the  way  that  Kant  knocks  them  about. 
The  fact  that  the  ordinary  man  among  us  easily  perceives  that 
Kant  was  right  shows  only  how  the  climate  of  the  intellec- 
tual world  has  changed.  Freedom,  immortality,  God,  are  not 
indeed  provable.  If  given  at  all,  they  can  be  given  only  in 
the  practical  reason.  Still  they  are  postulates  in  the  moral 
order  which  makes  man  the  citizen  of  an  intelligible  world. 
There  can  be  no  '  ought '  for  a  being  who  is  necessitated. 
We  can  perceive,  and  do  perceive,  that  we  ought  to  do  a 
thing.  It  follows  that  we  can  do  it.  However,  the  hindrances 
to  the  realisation  of  the  moral  ideal  are  such  that  it  cannot 
be  realised  in  a  finite  time.  Hence  the  postulate  of  eternal 
life  for  the  individual.  Finally,  reason  demands  the  realisation 
of  a  supreme  good,  both  a  perfect  virtue  and  a  correspond- 
ing happiness.  Man  is  a  final  end  only  as  a  moral  subject. 
I  There  must  be  One  who  is  not  only  the  law-giver,  but  in 
himself  also  the  realisation  of  the  law  of  the  moral  world. 
Kant's  moral  argument  thus  steps  out  of  the  line  of  the 
others.  It  is  not  a  proof  at  all  in  the  sense  in  which  they 
attempted  to  be  proofs.  The  existence  of  God  appears  as  a 
necessary  assumption,  if  the  highest  good  and  value  in  the 
world  are  to  be  fulfilled.  But  the  conception  and  possibility 
of  realisation  of  a  highest  good  is  itself  something  which 
cannot  be  concluded  with  theoretical  evidentiality.  It  is 
the  object  of  a  belief  which  in  entire  freedom  is  directed  to 
that  end.  Kant  lays  stress  upon  the  fact  that  among  the 
practical  ideas  of  reason,  that  of  freedom  is  the  one  whose 
reality  admits  most  nearly  of  being  proved  by  the  laws  of 


n.]  IDEALISTIC  PHILOSOPHY  63 

pure  reason,  as  well  as  in  conduct  and  experience.  Upon  an 
act  of  freedom,  then,  belief  rests.  '  It  is  the  free  holding  that 
to  be  true,  which  for  the  fulfilment  of  a  purpose  we  find  neces- 
sary.' Now,  as  object  of  this  '  free  holding  something  to  be 
true,'  he  sets  forth  the  conception  of  the  highest  good  in  the 
world,  to  be  realised  through  freedom.  It  is  clear  that  before 
this  argument  would  prove  that  a  God  is  necessary  to  the 
realisation  of  the  moral  order,  it  would  have  to  be  shown 
that  there  are  no  adequate  forces  immanent  within  society 
itself  for  the  establishment  and  fulfilment  of  that  order.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  reflexion  in  the  nineteenth  century,  de- 
voted as  it  has  been  to  the  evolution  of  society,  has  busied 
itself  with  hardly  anything  more  than  with  the  study  of 
those  immanent  elements  which  make  for  morahty.  It  is 
therefore  not  an  external  guarantor  of  morals,  such  as  Kant 
thought,  which  is  here  given.  It  is  the  immanent  God  who 
is  revealed  in  the  history  and  life  of  the  race,  even  as  also  it 
is  the  immanent  God  who  is  revealed  in  the  consciousness  of 
the  individual  soul.  Even  the  moral  argument,  therefore,  in 
the  form  in  which  Kant  puts  it,  sounds  remote  and  strange  to 
us.  His  reasoning  strains  and  creaks  almost  as  if  he  were 
still  trying  to  do  that  which  he  had  just  declared  could  not 
be  done.  What  remains  of  significance  for  us,  is  this.  All 
the  debate  about  first  causes,  absolute  beings,  and  the  rest, 
gives  us  no  God  such  as  our  souls  need.  If  a  man  is  to  find 
the  witness  for  soul,  immortality  and  God  at  all,  he  must 
find  it  within  himself  and  in  the  spiritual  history  of  his  fellows. 
He  must  venture,  in  freedom,  the  belief  in  these  things,  and 
find  their  corroboration  in  the  contribution  which  they  make 
to  the  solution  of  the  mystery  of  life.  One  must  venture  to 
win  them.  One  must  continue  to  venture,  to  keep  them. 
If  it  were  not  so,  they  would  not  be  objects  of  faith. 

The  source  of  the  radical  evil  in  man  is  an  intelligible 
act  of  human  freedom  not  further  to  be  explained.  Moral 
evil  is  not,  as  such,  transmitted.  Moral  qualities  are  insepar- 
able from  the  responsibility  of  the  person  who  commits  the 
deeds.  Yet  this  radical  disposition  to  evil  is  to  be  changed 
into  a  good  one,  not  altogether  by  a  process  of  moral  refor- 


54       HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT   [ch. 

.mation.  There  is  such  a  thing  as  a  fundamental  revolution 
of  a  man's  habit  of  thought,  a  conscious  and  voluntary  trans- 
'  ference  of  a  man's  intention  to  obey,  from  the  superficial  and 
,  selfish  desires  which  he  has  followed,  to  the  deep  and  spiritual 
ones  which  he  will  henceforth  allow.  There  is  an  epoch 
'in  a  man's  Hfe  when  he  makes  the  transition.  He  probably 
|does  it  imder  the  spell  of  personal  influence,  by  the  power  of 
pxample,  through  the  beauty  of  another  personality.  To 
Kant  salvation  was  character.  It  was  of  and  in  and  by 
character.  To  no  thinker  has  the  moral  participation  of  a 
man  in  the  regeneration  of  his  own  character  been  more 
certain  and  necessary  than  to  Kant.  Yet  the  change  in 
direction  of  the  will  generally  comes  by  an  impulse  from 
without.  It  comes  by  the  impress  of  a  noble  personality. 
It  is  sustained  by  enthusiasm  for  that  personality.  Kant 
has  therefore  a  perfectly  rational  and  ethical  and  vital 
meam'ng  for  the  phrase  '  new  birth.' 

For  the  purpose  of  this  impulse  to  goodness,  nothing  is  so 
effective  as  the  contemplation  of  an  historical  example  of  such 
surpassing  moral  grandeur  as  that  which  we  behold  in  Jesus. 
For  this  reason  we  may  look  to  Jesus  as  the  ideal  of  goodness 
presented  to  us  in  flesh  and  blood.  Yet  the  assertion  that 
Jesus'  historical  personahty  altogether  corresponds  with  the 
complete  and  eternal  ethical  ideal  is  one  which  we  have  no 
need  to  make.  We  do  not  possess  in  our  own  minds  the 
absolute  ideal  with  which  in  that  assertion  we  compare  him. 
The  ethical  ideal  of  the  race  is  still  in  process  of  develop- 
ment. Jesus  has  been  the  greatest  factor  urging  forward  that 
development.  We  ourselves  stand  at  a  certain  point  in  that 
development.  We  have  the  ideals  which  we  have  because 
we  stand  at  that  point  at  which  we  do.  The  men  who  come 
after  us  will  have  a  worthier  ideal  than  have  we.  Again,  to 
say  that  Jesus  in  his  words  and  conduct  expressed  in  its 
totality  the  eternal  ethical  ideal,  would  make  of  his  life 
something  different  from  the  real,  human  life.  Every  real, 
human  life  is  lived  within  certain  actual  antitheses  which 
call  out  certain  qualities  and  do  not  call  out  others.  They 
demand  certain  reactions  and  not  others.     This  is  the  con- 


n.]  IDEALISTIC  PHILOSOPHY  55 

Crete  element  without  which  nothing  historical  can  be  con- 
ceived. To  say  that  Jesus  lived  in  entire  conformity  to  the 
ethical  ideal  so  far  as  we  are  able  to  conceive  it,  and  within 
the  circumstances  which  his  own  time  and  place  imposed,  is 
the  most  that  we  can  say.  But  in  any  case,  Kant  insists, 
the  real  obieclof  ourrehgious  faith  is  not  the  historic  man, 
but  the  ideal  of  humanity  well-pleasing  to  God.  Since  this 
ideal  is  not  of  our  own  creation,  but  is  given  us  in  our  super- 
sensible nature,  it  may  be  conceived  as  the  Son  of  God  come 
down  from  heaven. 

The  turn  of  this  last  phrase  is  an  absolutely  characteristic 
one,  and  brings  out  another  quality  of  Kant's  mind  in  dealing 
with  the  Christian  doctrines.  They  are  to  him  but  symbols, 
forms  into  which  a  variety  of  meanings  may  be  run.  He  had 
no  great  appreciation  of  the  historical  element  in  doctrine. 
He  had  no  deep  sense  of  the  social  element  and  of  that  for 
which  Christian  institutions  stand.  We  may  illustrate  with 
that  which  he  says  concerning  Christ's  vicarious  sacrifice. 
Substitution  cannot  take  place  in  the  moral  world.  Ethical  I 
salvation  could  not  be  conferred  through  such  a  substitution,  I 
even  if  this  could  take  place.  Still,  the  conception  of  the 
vicarious  suffering  of  Christ  may  be  taken  as  a  symbolical  \ 
expression  of  the  idea  that  in  the  pain  of  self -discipline,  of 
obedience  and  patience,  the  new  man  in  us  suffers,  as  it  were 
vicariously,  for  the  old.  The  atonement  is  a  continual  ethical 
process  in  the  heart  of  the  religious  man.  It  is  a  grave  defect 
of  Kant's  religious  philosophy,  that  it  was  so  absolutely 
individualistic.  Had  he  realised  more  deeply  than  he  did  the 
social  character  of  religion  and  the  meaning  of  these  doctrines, 
not  alone  as  between  man  and  God,  but  as  between  man  and 
man,  he  surely  would  have  drawn  nearer  to  that  interpretation 
of  the  doctrine  of  the  atonement  which  has  come  more  and 
more  to  prevail.  This  is  the  solution  which  finds  in  the 
atonement  of  Christ  the  last  and  most  glorious  example  of 
a  universal  law  of  human  life  and  history.  That  law  is  that 
no  redemptive  good  for  men  is  ever  secured  without  the 
suffering  and  sacrifice  of  those  who  seek  to  confer  that  good 
upon  theirTellows.     Kant  was  disposed  to  regard  the  tradi- 


56     HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

tional  forms  of  Christian  doctrine,  not  as  the  old  rationalism 
had  done,  as  impositions  of  a  priesthood  or  inherently  absurd. 
He  sought  to  divest  them  indeed  of  that  which  was  specu- 
latively untrue,  though  he  saw  in  them  only  symbols  of  the 
great  moral  truths  which  lie  at  the  heart  of  religion.  The 
historical  spirit  of  the  next  fifty  years  was  to  teach  men  a  very 
different  way  of  dealing  with  these  same  doctrines. 


Kant  had  said  that  the  primary  condition,  fundamental 
not  merely  to  knowledge,  but  to  all  connected  experience,  is 
the  knowing,  experiencing,  thinking,  acting  self.  It  is  that 
which  says  '  I,'  the  ego,  the  permanent  subject.  But  that  is 
not  enough.  The  knowing  self  demands  in  turn  a  knowable 
world.  It  must  have  something  outside  of  itself  to  which  it 
yet  stands  related,  the  object  of  knowledge.  Knowledge  is 
somehow  the  combination  of  these  two,  the  result  of  their  co- 
operation. How  have  we  to  think  of  this  co-operation  ?  Both 
Hume  and  Berkeley  had  ended  in  scepticism  as  to  the  reality 
of  knowledge.  Hume  was  in  doubt  as  to  the  reality  of  the 
subject,  Berkeley  as  to  that  of  the  object.  Kant  dissented 
from  both.  He  vindicated  the  undoubted  reality  of  the 
impression  which  we  have  concerning  a  thing.  Yet  how  far 
that  impression  is  the  reproduction  of  the  thing  as  it  is  in 
itself,  we  can  never  perfectly  know.  What  we  have  in  our 
minds  is  not  the  object..  It  is  a  notion  of  that  object,  although 
we  may  be  assured  that  we  could  have  no  such  notion  were 
there  no  object.  Equally,  the  notion  is  what  it  is  because  the 
subject  is  what  it  is.  We  can  never  get  outside  the  processes 
of  our  own  thought.  We  cannot  know  the  thing  as  it  is,  the 
Ding-an-sich,  in  Kant's  phrase.  We  know  only  that  there 
must  be  a  *  thing  in  itself.' 

FiCHTB 

Fichte  asked,  Why  ?  Why  must  there  be  a  Ding-an-sich  ? 
Why  is  not  that  also  the  result  of  the  activity  of  the  ego  ? 


n.]  IDEALISTIC  PHILOSOPHY  57 

Why  is  not  the  ego,  the  thinking  subject,  all  that  is,  the  creator 
of  the  world,  according  to  the  laws  of  thought  ?  If  so  much 
is  reduced  to  idea,  why  not  all  ?  This  was  Fichte's  rather 
forced  resolution  of  the  old  dualism  of  thought  and  thing. 
It  is  not  the  denial  of  the  reality  of  things,  but  the  assertion 
that  their  ideal  element,  that  part  of  them  which  is  not  mere 
'  thing,'  the  action  and  subject  of  the  action,  is  their  imder- 
lying  reality.  According  to  Kant  things  exist  in  a  world 
beyond  us.  Man  has  no  faculty  by  which  he  can  penetrate 
into  that  world.  Still,  the  farther  we  follow  Kant  in  his 
analysis  the  more  does  the  contribution  to  knowledge  from 
the  side  of  the  mind  tend  to  increase,  and  the  more  does  the 
factor  in  our  impressions  from  the  side  of  things  tend  to  fade 
away.  This  basis  of  impression  being  wholly  unknowable  is  as 
good  as  non-existent  for  us.  Yet  it  never  actually  disappears. 
There  would  seem  to  be  inevitable  a  sort  of  kernel  of  matter 
or  prick  of  sense  about  which  all  our  thoughts  are  generated. 
Yet  this  residue  is  a  vanishing  quantity.  This  seemed  to 
Fichte  to  be  a  self-contradiction  and  a  half-way  measure. 
Only  two  positions  appeared  to  him  thorough-going  and 
consequent.  Either  one  posits  as  fundamental  the  thing 
itself,  matter,  independent  of  any  consciousness  of  it.  So 
Spinoza  had  taught.  Or  else  one  takes  consciousness,  the 
conscious  subject,  independent  of  any  matter  or  thing  as 
fundamental.  This  last  Fichte  claimed  to  be  the  real  issue  of 
Kant's  thought.  He  asserts  that  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
thing  in  itself  we  can  never  explain  knowledge.  We  may  be 
as  skilful  as  possible  in  placing  one  thing  behind  another  in 
the  relation  of  cause  to  effect.  It  is,  however,  an  unending 
series.  It  is  like  the  cosmogony  of  the  Eastern  people  which 
fabled  that  the  earth  rests  upon  the  back  of  an  elephant. 
The  elephant  stands  upon  a  tortoise.  The  question  is,  upon 
what  does  the  tortoise  stand  ?  So  here,  we  may  say,  in  the 
conclusive  manner  in  which  men  have  always  said,  that  God 
made  the  world.  Yet  sooner  or  later  we  come  to  the  child's 
question :  Who  made  God  ?  Fichte  rightly  replied :  '  If 
God  is  for  us  only  an  object  of  knowledge,  the  Ding-an-sicli  at 
the  end  of  the  series,  there  is  no  escape  from  the  answer  that 


68    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT      [ch. 

man,  the  thinker,  in  thinking  God  made  him.'  All  the  world, 
^including  man,  is  but  the  reflexion,  the  revelation  in  forms 
of  the  finite,  of  an  unceasing  action  of  thought  of  which  the 
ego  is  the  subject.  Nothing  more  paradoxical  than  this 
conclusion  can  be  imagined.  It  seems  to  make  the  human 
subject,  the  man  myself,  the  creator  of  the  universe,  and  the 
universe  only  that  which  I  happen  to  think  it  to  be. 

This  interpretation  was  at  first  put  upon  Fichte's  reasoning 
with  such  vigour  that  he  was  accused  of  atheism.     He  was 
driven  from  his  chair  in  Jena.     Only  after  several  years  was 
he  called  to  a  corresponding  post  in  Berlin.     Later,  in  his 
Vocation  of  Man,  he  brought  his  thought  to  clearness  in  this 
I  form  :   '  If  God  be  only  the  object  of  thought,  it  remains  true 
'  that  he  is  then  but  the  creation  of  man's  thought.     God  is, 
'however,  to  be  understood  as  subject,  as  the  real  subject, 
I  the  transcendent  thinking  and  knowing  subject,  indwelling  in 
•  the  world  and  making  the  world  what  it  is,  indwelling  in  us 
^  and  making  us  what  we  are.     We  ourselves  are  subjects  only 
(in  so  far  as  we  are  parts  of  God.     We  think  and  know  only 
^in  so  far  as  God  thinks  and  knows  and  acts  and  lives  in  us. 
•The  world,  including  ourselves,  is  but  the  reflection  of  the 
thought  of  God,  who  thus  only  has  existence.     Neither  the 
'world  nor  we  have  existence  apart  from  him.' 
'     Johann  Gottheb  Fichte  was  born  at  Rammenau  in  1762. 
His  father  was  a  ribbon  weaver.     He  came  of  a  family  dis- 
tinguished for  piety  and  uprightness.     He  studied  at  Jena, 
and  became  an  instructor  there  in  1793.     He  was  at  first  a 
devout  disciple  of  Kant,   but  gradually  separated  himself 
from  his  master.     There  is  a  humorous  tale  as  to  one  of  his 
early  books  which  was,  through  mistake  of  the  publisher,  put 
forth  without  the  author's  name.     For  a  brief  time  it  was 
hailed  as  a  work  of  Kant — ^his  Critique  of  Revelation.     Fichte 
was  a  man  of  high  moral  enthusiasms,  very  uncompromising, 
unable  to  put  himself  in  the  place  of  an  opponent,  in  incessant 
strife.     The  great  work  of  his  Jena  period  was  his  Wissen- 
sehaftslehre,  1794.     His  popular  works.  Die  Bestimmung  des 
Menschen  and  Anweisung  zum  seligen  Leben,  belong  to  his 
Berlin  period.     The  disasters  of  1806  drove  him  out  of  Berlin. 


n.]  IDEALISTIC  PHILOSOPHY  69 

Amidst  the  dangers  and  discouragements  of  the  next  few 
years  he  wrote  his  famous  Eeden  an  die  deutsche  Nation.  He 
drew  up  the  plan  for  the  founding  of  the  University  of  BerHn. 
In  1810  he  was  called  to  be  rector  of  the  newly  established 
university.  He  was,  perhaps,  the  chief  adviser  of  Frederick 
Wilham  iii.  in  the  laying  of  the  foundations  of  the  university, 
which  was  surely  a  notable  venture  for  those  trying  years. 
In  the  autumn  of  1812  and  again  in  1813,  when  the  hospitals 
were  full  of  sick  and  wounded  after  the  Russian  and  Leipzig 
campaigns,  Fichte  and  his  wife  were  unceasing  in  their  care 
of  the  sufferers.  He  died  of  fever  contracted  in  the  hospital 
in  January  1814. 

According  to  Fichte,  as  we  have  seen,  the  world  of  sense 
is  the  reflection  of  our  own  inner  activity.  It  exists  for  us  as 
the  sphere  and  material  of  our  duty.  The  moral  order  only 
is  divine.  We,  the  finite  intelligences,  exist  only  in  and 
through  the  infinite  intelhgence.  All  our  hfe  is  thus  God's 
life.  We  are  immortal  because  he  is  immortal.  Our  con- 
sciousness is  his  consciousness.  Our  life  and  moral  force  is 
his,  the  reflection  and  manifestation  of  his  being,  individua- 
tion of  the  infinite  reason  which  is  everyivhere  present  in 
the  finite.  In  God  we  see  the  world  also  in  a  new  light. 
There  is  no  longer  any  nature  which  is  external  to  ourselves 
and  unrelated  to  ourselves.  There  is  only  God  manifesting 
himself  in  nature.  Even  the  evil  is  only  a  means  to  good  and, 
therefore,  only  an  apparent  evil.  We  are  God's  immediate 
manifestation,  being  spirit  fike  himself.  The  world  is  his 
mediate  manifestation.  The  world  of  dead  matter,  as  men 
have  called  it,  does  not  exist.  God  is  the  reahty  within  the 
forms  of  nature  and  within  ourselves,  by  which  alone  we  have 
reality.  The  duty  to  which  a  God  outside  of  ourselves  could 
only  command  us,  becomes  a  privilege  to  which  we  need  no 
commandment,  but  to  the  fulfilment  of  which,  rather,  we  are 
drawn  in  joy  by  the  forces  of  our  own  being.  How  a  man 
could,  even  in  the  immature  stages  of  these  thoughts,  have 
been  persecuted  for  atheism,  it  is  not  easy  to  see,  although 
we  may  admit  that  his  earlier  forms  of  statement  were  be- 
wildering.    When  we  have  his  whole  thought  before  us  we 


60      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ciL 

should  say  rather  that  it  borders  on  acosmic  pantheism,  for 
which  everything  is  God  and  the  world  does  not  exist. 

We  have  no  need  to  follow  Fichte  farther.  Suffice  it  to 
say,  with  reference  to  the  theory  of  knowledge,  that  he  had 
discovered  that  one  could  not  stand  still  with  Kant.  One 
must  either  go  back  toward  the  position  of  the  old  empiri- 
cism which  assumed  the  reality  of  the  world  exactly  as  it 
appeared,  or  else  one  must  go  forward  to  an  idealism  more 
thorough-going  than  Kant  had  planned.  Of  the  two  paths 
which,  with  all  the  vast  advance  of  the  natural  sciences,  the 
thought  of  the  nineteenth  century  might  traverse,  that  of  the 
denial  of  everything  except  the  mechanism  of  nature,  and  that 
of  the  assertion  that  nature  is  but  the  organ  of  spirit  and  is 
instinct  with  reason,  Fichte  chose  the  latter  and  blazed  out 
the  path  along  which  all  the  idealists  have  followed  him.  In 
reference  to  the  philosophy  of  religion,  we  must  say  that,  with 
all  the  extravagance,  the  pantheism  and  mysticism  of  his 
phrases,  Fichte's  great  contribution  was  his  breaking  down 
of  the  old  dualism  between  God  and  man  which  was  still 
V  fundamental  to  Kant.  It  was  his  assertion  of  the  unity  of 
man  and  God  and  of  the  life  of  God  in  man.  This  thought 
has  been  appropriated  in  all  of  modern  theology. 

SCHELLING 

It  was  the  meagreness  of  Fichte's  treatment  of  nature 
which  impelled  Schelling  to  what  he  called  his  outbreak  into 
reality.  Nature  will  not  be  dismissed,  as  simply  that  which 
is  not  I.  You  cannot  say  that  nature  is  only  the  sphere  of 
my  self-realisation.  Individuals  are  in  their  way  the  children 
of  nature.  They  are  this  in  respect  of  their  souls  as  much 
as  of  their  bodies.  Nature  was  before  they  were.  Nature  is, 
moreover,  not  alien  to  intelligence.  On  the  contrary,  it  is 
a  treasure-house  of  intelligible  forms  which  demand  to  be 
treated  as  such.  It  appeared  to  Schelling,  therefore,  a  truer 
ideahsm  to  work  out  an  intelligible  system  of  nature,  exhibit- 
ing its  essential  oneness  with  personality. 

Friedrich  Wilhelm  Joseph  von  Schelling  was  born  in  1775 


n.]  IDEALISTIC  PHILOSOPHY  61 

at  Leonberg  in  Wiirttemberg.  His  father  was  a  clergyman. 
He  was  precocious  in  his  intellectual  development  and  much 
spoiled  by  vanity.  Before  he  was  twenty  years  old  he  had 
published  three  works  upon  problems  suggested  by  Fichte. 
At  twenty-three  he  was  extraordinarius  at  Jena.  He  had 
apparently  a  brilliant  career  before  him.  He  published  his 
Erster  Entumrf  eines  Systems  der  Naturphilosophie,  1799,  and 
also  his  System  des  transcendentalen  Idealismus,  1800.  Even 
his  short  residence  at  Jena  was  troubled  by  violent  conflicts 
with  his  colleagues.  It  was  brought  to  an  end  by  his 
marriage  with  the  wife  of  Augustus  von  Schlegel,  who  had 
been  divorced  for  the  purpose.  From  1806  to  1841  he  lived  in 
Munich  in  retirement.  The  long-expected  books  which  were 
to  fulfil  his  early  promise  never  appeared.  Hegel's  stricture 
was  just.  Schelling  had  no  taste  for  the  prolonged  and 
intense  labour  which  his  brilliant  early  works  marked  out. 
He  died  in  1854,  having  reached  the  age  of  seventy-nine 
years,  of  which  at  least  fifty  were  as  melancholy  and  fruitless 
as  could  well  be  imagined. 

The  dominating  idea  of  Schelling's  philosophy  of  nature 
may  be  said  to  be  the  exhibition  of  nature  as  the  progress  of 
intelligence  toward  consciousness  and  personality.  Nature 
is  the  ego  in  evolution,  personality  in  the  making.  All 
natural  objects  are  visible  analogues  and  counterparts  of 
mind.  The  intelligence  which  their  structure  reveals,  men 
had  interpreted  as  residing  in  the  mind  of  a  maker  of  the 
world.  Nature  had  been  spoken  of  as  if  it  were  a  watch. 
God  was  its  great  artificer.  No  one  asserted  that  its  intelli- 
gence and  power  of  development  lay  within  itself.  On  the 
contrary,  nature  is  always  in  the  process  of  advance  from 
lower,  less  highly  organised  and  less  intelligible  forms,  to 
those  which  are  more  highly  organised,  more  nearly  the 
counterpart  of  the  active  intelligence  in  man  himself.  The 
personality  of  man  had  been  viewed  as  standing  over  against 
nature,  this  last  being  thought  of  as  static  and  permanent. 
On  the  contrary,  the  personality  of  man,  with  all  of  its  in- 
telligence and  free  will,  is  but  the  climax  and  fulfilment  of  a 
long  succession  of  intelligible  forms  in  nature,  passing  upward 


62      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

from  the  inorganic  to  the  organic,  from  the  unconscious  to  the 
conscious,  from  the  non-moral  to  the  moral,  as  these  are  at 
last  seen  in  man.  Of  course,  it  was  the  life  of  organic  nature 
which  first  suggested  this  notion  to  Schelling.  An  organism 
is  a  self-moving,  self-producing  whole.  It  is  an  idea  in  process 
of  self-realisation.  What  was  observed  in  the  organism  was 
then  made  by  Schelling  the  root  idea  of  universal  nature. 
Nature  is  in  all  its  parts  living,  self-moving  along  the  lines 
of  its  development,  productivity  and  product  both  in  one. 
Empirical  science  may  deal  with  separate  products  of  nature. 
It  may  treat  them  as  objects  of  analysis  and  investigation. 
It  may  even  take  the  whole  of  nature  as  an  object.  But 
nature  is  not  mere  object.  Philosophy  has  to  treat  of  the 
inner  life  which  moves  the  whole  of  nature  as  intelligible 
productivity,  as  subject,  no  longer  as  object.  Personality 
has  slowly  arisen  out  of  nature.  Nature  was  going  through 
this  process  of  self-development  before  there  were  any  men 
to  contemplate  it.  It  would  go  through  this  process  were 
there  no  longer  men  to  contemplate  it. 

Schelling  has  here  rounded  out  the  theory  of  absolute 
idealism  which  Fichte  had  carried  through  in  a  one-sided 
way.  He  has  given  us  also  a  wonderful  anticipation  of  certain 
modern  ideas  concerning  nature,  a  preparation  for  the  doc- 
trine of  evolution,  which  is  a  stroke  of  genius  in  its  way.  He 
attempted  to  arrange  the  realm  of  unconscious  intelligences 
in  an  ascending  series,  which  should  bridge  the  gulf  between 
the  lowest  of  natural  forms  and  the  fully  equipped  organism  in 
which  self-consciousness,  with  the  intellectual,  the  emotional, 
and  moral  life,  at  last  emerges.  Inadequate  material  and  a 
fondness  for  analogies  led  Schelling  into  vagaries  in  folio  mng 
out  this  scheme.  Nevertheless,  it  is  only  in  detail  that  we 
can  look  askance  at  his  attempt.  In  principle  our  own  con- 
ception of  the  universe  is  the  same.  It  is  the  dynamic  view 
of  nature  and  an  application  of  the  principle  of  evolution  in 
the  widest  sense.  His  errors  were  those  into  which  a  man 
was  bound  to  fall  who  undertook  to  forestall  by  a  sweep 
of  the  imagination  that  which  has  been  the  result  of  the 
detailed  and  patient  investigation  of  three  generations.    What 


n.]  IDEALISTIC  PHILOSOPHY  63 

Schelling  attempted  was  to  take  nature  as  we  know  it  and 
to  exhibit  it  as  in  reality  a  function  of  intelligence,  pointing, 
through  all  the  gradations  of  its  varied  forms,  towards  its 
necessary  goal  in  self-conscious  personality.  Instead,  there- 
fore, of  our  having  in  nature  and  personaUty  two  things 
which  cannot  be  brought  together,  these  become  members 
of  one  great  organism  of  intelligence  of  which  the  immanent 
God  is  the  source  and  the  sustaining  power.  These  ideas 
constitute  Schelling's  contribution  to  an  idealistic  and,  of 
course,  an  essentially  monistic  view  of  the  universe.  The 
unity  of  man  with  God,  Fichte  had  asserted.  SchelUng  set 
forth  the  oneness  of  God  and  nature,  and  again  of  man  and 
nature.     The  circle  was  complete. 


If  we  have  succeeded  in  conveying  a  clear  idea  of  the  move- 
ment of  thought  from  Kant  to  Hegel,  that  idea  might  be 
stated  thus.  There  are  but  three  possible  objects  which  can 
engage  the  thought  of  man.  These  are  nature  and  man  and 
God.  There  is  the  universe,  of  which  we  become  aware 
through  experience  from  our  earhest  childhood.  Then  there 
is  man,  the  man  given  in  self-consciousness,  primarily  the 
man  myself.  In  this  sense  man  seems  to  stand  over  against 
nature.  Then,  as  the  third  possible  object  of  thought,  we  have 
God.  Upon  the  thought  of  God  we  usually  come  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  category  of  cause.  God  is  the  name 
which  men  give  to  that  which  lies  behind  nature  and  man  as 
the  origin  and  explanation  of  both.  Plato's  chief  interest 
was  in  man.  He  talked  much  concerning  a  God  who  was 
somehow  the  speculative  postulate  of  the  spiritual  nature  in 
man.  Aristotle  began  a  real  observation  of  nature.  But  the 
ancient  and,  still  more,  the  mediaeval  study  of  nature  was 
dominated  by  abstract  and  theological  assumptions.  These 
prevented  any  real  study  of  that  nature  in  the  midst  of  which 
man  lives,  in  reaction  against  which  he  develops  his  powers, 
and  to  which,  on  one  whole  side  of  his  nature,  he  belongs. 
Even  in  respect  of  that  which  men  reverently  took  to  be 


64      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

thought  concerning  God,  they  seem  to  have  been  unaware  how 
much  of  their  material  was  imaginative  and  poetic  symboHsm 
drawn  from  the  experience  of  man.  The  traditional  idea 
of  revelation  proved  a  disturbing  factor.  Assuming  that 
revelation  gave  information  concerning  God,  and  not  rather 
the  religious  experience  of  communion  with  God  himself, 
men  accepted  statements  of  the  documents  of  revelation  as 
if  they  had  been  definitions  graciously  given  from  out  the 
realm  of  the  unseen.  In  reality,  they  were  but  fetches  from 
out  the  world  of  the  known  into  the  world  of  the  unknown. 

The  point  of  interest  is  this  : — In  all  possible  combinations 
in  which,  throughout  the  history  of  thought,  these  three 
objects  had  been  set,  the  one  with  the  others,  they  had  always 
remained  three  objects.  There  was  no  essential  relation  of 
the  one  to  the  other.  They  were  like  the  points  of  a  triangle 
of  which  any  one  stood  over  against  the  other  two.  God 
stood  over  against  the  man  whom  he  had  fashioned,  man 
over  against  the  God  to  whom  he  was  responsible.  The 
consequences  for  theology  are  evident.  When  men  wished 
to  describe,  for  example,  Jesus  as  the  Son  of  God,  they  laid 
emphasis  upon  every  quality  which  he  had,  or  was  supposed 
to  have,  which  was  not  common  to  him  with  other  men. 
They  lost  sight  of  that  profound  interest  of  religion  which 
has  always  claimed  that,  in  some  sense,  all  men  are  sons  of 
God  and  Jesus  was  the  son  of  man.  Jesus  was  then  only 
truly  honoured  as  divine  when  every  trait  of  his  humanity 
was  ignored.  Similarly,  when  men  spoke  of  revelation  they 
laid  emphasis  upon  those  particulars  in  which  this  supposed 
method  of  coming  by  information  was  unlike  all  other 
methods.  Knowledge  derived  directly  from  God  through 
revelation  was  in  no  sense  the  parallel  of  knowledge  derived 
by  men  in  any  other  way.  So  also  God  stood  over  against 
nature.  God  was  indeed  declared  to  have  made  nature. 
He  had,  however,  but  given  it,  so  to  say,  an  original  impulse. 
That  impulse  also  it  had  in  some  strange  way  lost  or  per- 
verted, so  that  the  world,  though  it  had  been  made  by  God, 
was  not  good.  For  the  most  part  it  moved  itself,  although 
God's  sovereignty  was  evidenced  in  that  he  could  still  super- 


n.]  IDEALISTIC  PHILOSOPHY  65 

vene  upon  it,  if  he  chose.  The  supernatural  was  the  realm 
of  God.  Natural  and  supernatural  were  mutually  exclusive 
terms,  just  as  we  saw  that  divine  and  human  were  exclusive 
terms.  So  also,  on  the  third  side  of  our  triangle,  man  stood 
over  against  nature.  Nature  was  to  primitive  men  the 
realm  of  caprice,  in  which  they  imagined  demons,  spirits  and 
the  like.  These  were  antagonistic  to  men,  as  also  hostile  to 
God.  Then,  when  with  the  advance  of  reflexion  these 
spirits,  and  equally  their  counterparts,  the  good  genii  and 
angels,  had  all  died,  nature  became  the  realm  of  iron  neces- 
sity, of  regardless  law,  of  all-destroying  force,  of  cruel  and 
indifferent  fate.  From  this  men  took  refuge  in  the  thought 
of  a  compassionate  God,  though  they  could  not  withdraw 
themselves  or  those  whom  they  loved  from  the  inexorable 
laws  of  nature.  They  could  not  see  that  God  always,  or  even 
often,  intervened  on  their  behalf.  It  cannot  be  denied  that 
these  ideas  prevail  to  some  extent  in  the  popular  theology 
at  the  present  moment.  Much  of  our  popular  religious 
language  is  an  inheritance  from  a  time  when  they  universally 
prevailed.  The  religious  intuition  even  of  psalmists  and 
prophets  opposed  many  of  these  notions.  The  pure  religious 
intuition  of  Jesus  opposed  almost  every  one  of  them.  Mystics 
in  every  religion  have  had,  at  times,  insight  into  an  altogether 
different  scheme  of  things.  The  philosophy,  however,  even 
of  the  learned,  would,  in  the  main,  have  supported  the  views 
above  described,  from  the  dawn  of  reflexion  almost  to  our 
own  time. 

It  was  Kant  who  first  began  the  resolution  of  this  three- 
cornered  difficulty.  When  he  pointed  out  that  into  the  world, 
as  Ave  know  it,  an  element  of  spirit  goes,  that  in  it  an  element 
of  the  ideal  inheres,  he  began  a  movement  which  has  issued 
in  modem  monism.  He  affirmed  that  that  element  from 
my  thought  which  enters  into  the  world,  as  I  know  it,  may 
be  so  great  that  only  just  a  point  of  matter  and  a  prick  of 
sense  remains.  Fichte  said :  '  Why  do  we  put  it  all  in  so 
perverse  a  way  ?  Why  reduce  the  world  of  matter  to  just 
a  point  ?  Why  is  it  not  taken  for  what  it  is,  and  yet  under- 
stood to  be  all  alive  with  God  and  we  able  to  think  of  it, 


66      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

because  we  are  parts  of  the  great  thinker  God  ?  '  Still  Fichte 
had  busied  himself  almost  wholly  with  consciousness.  Schel- 
ling  endeavoured  to  correct  that.  Nature  lives  and  moves 
in  God,  just  as  truly  in  one  way  as  does  man  in  another. 
Men  arise  out  of  nature.  A  circle  has  been  drawn  through 
the  points  of  our  triangle.  Nature  and  man  are  in  a  new 
and  deeper  sense  revelations  of  God.  In  fact,  supplementing 
one  another,  they  constitute  the  only  possible  channels  for 
the  manifestation  of  God.  It  hardly  needs  to  be  said  that 
these  thoughts  are  widely  appropriated  in  our  modern  world. 
These  once  novel  speculations  of  the  kings  of  thought  have 
made  their  way  slowly  to  all  strata  of  society.  Remote  and 
difficult  in  their  first  expression  in  the  language  of  the  schools, 
their  implications  are  to-day  on  everybody's  lips.  It  is  this 
unitary  view  of  the  universe  which  has  made  difficult  the 
acceptance  of  a  theology,  the  understanding  of  a  religion, 
which  are  still  largely  phrased  in  the  language  of  a  philosophy 
to  which  these  ideas  did  not  belong.  There  is  not  an  historic 
creed,  there  is  hardly  a  greater  system  of  theology,  which  is 
not  stated  in  terms  of  a  philosophy  and  science  which  no 
longer  reign.  Men  are  asking :  '  cannot  Christianity  be  so 
stated  and  interpreted  that  it  shall  meet  the  needs  of  men 
of  the  twentieth  century,  as  truly  as  it  met  those  of  men  of 
the  first  or  of  the  sixteenth  ? '  Hegel,  the  last  of  this  great 
group  of  idealistic  philosophers  whom  we  shall  name,  en- 
thusiastically beUeved  in  this  new  interpretation  of  the  faith 
which  was  profoundly  dear  to  him.  He  made  important 
contribution  to  that  interpretation. 

Hegel 

Georg  Wilhelm  Friedrich  Hegel  was  born  in  Stuttgart  in 
1770.  His  father  was  in  the  fiscal  service  of  the  King  of 
Wiirttemberg.  He  studied  in  Tiibingen.  He  was  heavy  and 
slow  of  development,  in  striking  contrast  with  Schelling. 
He  served  as  tutor  in  Bern  and  Frankfort,  and  began  to  lecture 
in  Jena  in  1801.  He  was  much  overshadowed  by  Schelling. 
The  victory  of  Napoleon  at  Jena  in  1806  closed  the  university 


n.]  IDEALISTIC  PHILOSOPHY  67 

for  a  time.  In  1818  he  was  called  to  Fichte's  old  chair  in 
Berlin.  Never  on  very  good  terms  with  the  Prussian  Govern- 
ment, he  yet  showed  his  large  sympathy  with  life  in  every 
way.  After  1820  a  school  of  pliilosophical  thinkers  began 
to  gather  about  him.  His  first  great  book,  his  Phenomeno- 
logie  des  Geistes  1807  (translated,  Baillie,  London,  1910),  was 
pubhshed  at  the  end  of  his  Jena  period.  His  Philosophie  der 
Religion  and  Philosophie  der  Geschichte  were  edited  after  his 
death.  Tliey  are  mainly  in  the  form  which  his  notes  took 
between  1823  and  1827.  He  died  during  an  epidemic  of 
cholera  in  Berlin  in  1831. 

Besides  his  deep  interest  in  history  the  most  striking  feature 
of  Hegel's  preliminary  training  was  his  profound  study  of 
Christianity.  He  might  almost  be  said  to  have  turned  to 
philosophy  as  a  means  of  formulating  the  ideas  which  he  had 
conceived  concerning  the  development  of  the  religious  con- 
sciousness, which  seemed  to  him  to  have  been  the  bearer  of  all 
human  culture.  No  one  could  fail  to  see  that  the  idea  of  the 
relation  of  God  and  man,  of  which  we  have  been  speaking, 
was  boimd  to  make  itself  felt  in  the  interpretation  of  the 
doctrine  of  the  incarnation  and  of  all  the  dogmas,  Hke  that 
of  the  trinity,  which  are  connected  with  it.  Characteristically, 
Hegel  had  pure  joy  in  the  speculative  aspects  of  the  problem. 
If  one  may  speak  in  all  reverence,  and,  at  the  same  time,  not 
without  a  shade  of  humour,  Hegel  rejoiced  to  find  himself 
able,  as  he  supposed,  to  rehabihtate  the  dogma  of  the  trinity, 
rationalised  in  approved  fashion.  It  is  as  if  the  dogma  had 
been  a  revered  form  or  mould,  which  was  for  him  indeed 
emptied  of  its  original  content.  He  felt  bound  to  fill  it  anew. 
Or  to  speak  more  justly,  he  was  really  convinced  that  the  new 
meaning  which  he  poured  into  the  dogma  was  the  true  meaning 
which  the  Church  Fathers  had  been  seeking  all  the  while. 
In  the  light  of  two  generations  of  sober  dealing,  as  historians, 
with  such  problems,  we  can  but  view  his  solution  in  a  manner 
very  different  from  that  which  he  indulged.  He  was  even 
disposed  mildly  to  censure  the  professional  theologians  for 
leaving  the  defence  of  the  doctrine  of  the  trinity  to  the  philo- 
sophers.    There  were  then,  and  have  since  been,  defenders 


68       HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT  [ch. 

of  the  doctrine  who  have  thought  that  Hegel  rendered  them 
great  aid.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  despite  his  own  utter  serious- 
ness and  reverent  desire,  his  solution  was  a  complete  dis- 
solution of  the  doctrine  and  of  much  else  besides.  His  view 
would  have  been  fatal,  not  merely  to  that  particular  form 
of  orthodox  thought,  but,  what  is  much  more  serious,  to  the 
religious  meaning  for  which  it  stood.  Sooner  or  later  men 
have  seen  that  the  whole  drift  of  Hegelianism  was  to  transform 
religion  into  intellectualism.  One  might  say  that  it  was 
exactly  this  which  the  ancient  metaphysicians,  in  the  classic 
doctrine  of  the  trinity,  had  done.  They  had  transformed 
religion  into  metaphysics.  The  matter  would  not  have  been 
remedied  by  having  a  modem  metaphysician  do  the  same 
thing  in  another  way. 

Hegel  was  weary  of  Fichte's  endless  discussion  of  the  ego 
and  Schelling's  of  the  absolute.  It  was  not  the  abyss  of  the 
unknowable  from  which  things  are  said  to  come,  or  that  into 
which  they  go,  which  interested  Hegel.  It  was  their  process 
and  progress  which  we  can  know.  It  was  that  part  of  their 
movement  which  is  observable  within  actual  experience, 
with  which  he  was  concerned.  Now  one  of  the  laws  of  the 
movement  of  all  things,  he  said,  is  that  by  which  every 
thought  suggests,  and  every  force  tends  directly  to  produce, 
its  opposite.  Nothing  stands  alone.  Everything  exists  by 
the  balance  and  friction  of  opposing  tendencies.  We  have 
the  universal  contrasts  of  heat  and  cold,  of  light  and  darkness, 
of  inward  and  outward,  of  static  and  dynamic,  of  yes  and  no. 
There  are  two  sides  to  every  case,  democratic  government 
and  absolutism,  freedom  of  religion  and  authority,  the  in- 
dividualistic and  the  social  principles,  a  materialistic  and  a 
spiritual  interpretation  of  the  universe.  Only  things  which 
are  dead  have  ceased  to  have  this  tide  and  alternation. 
Christ  is  for  living  religion  now  a  man,  now  God,  revelation 
now  natural,  now  supernatural.  Religion  is  the  eternal  con- 
flict between  reason  and  faith,  morals  the  struggle  of  good 
and  evil,  God  now  mysterious  and  now  manifest. 

Fichte  had  said :  The  essence  of  the  universe  is  spirit.  Hegel 
said :  Yes,  but  the  true  notion  of  spirit  is  that  of  the  resolution 


n.]  IDEALISTIC  PHILOSOPHY  69 

of  contradiction,  of  the  exhibition  of  opposites  as  held  to- 
gether in  their  unity.  This  is  the  meaning  of  the  trinity.  In 
the  trinity  we  have  God  who  wills  to  manifest  himself,  Jesus 
in  whom  he  is  manifest,  and  the  spirit  common  to  them  both. 
God's  existence  is  not  static,  it  is  dynamic.  It  is  motion, 
not  rest.  God  is  revealer,  recipient,  and  revelation  all  in  one. 
The  trinity  was  for  Hegel  the  central  doctrine  of  Christianity. 
Popular  orthodoxy  had  drawn  near  to  the  assertion  of  three 
Gods.  The  revolt,  however,  in  asserting  the  unity  of  God, 
had  made  of  God  a  meaningless  absolute  as  foundation  of 
the  universe.  The  orthodox,  in  respect  to  the  person  of 
Christ,  had  always  indeed  asserted  in  laboured  way  that  Jesus 
was  both  God  and  man.  Starting  from  their  own  abstract 
conception  of  God,  and  attributing  to  Jesus  the  quahties  of 
that  abstraction,  they  had  ended  in  making  of  the  humanity 
of  Jesus  a  perfectly  unreal  thing.  On  the  other  hand,  those 
who  had  set  out  from  Jesus's  real  humanity  had  been  unable 
to  see  that  he  was  anything  more  than  a  mere  man,  as 
their  phrase  was.  On  their  own  assumption  of  the  mutual 
exclusiveness  of  the  conceptions  of  God  and  man,  they  could 
not  do  otherwise. 

Hegel  saw  clearly  that  God  can  be  known  to  us  only  in 
and  through  manifestation.  We  can  certainly  make  no 
predication  as  to  how  God  exists,  in  himself,  as  men  say,  and 
apart  from  our  knowledge.  He  exists  for  our  knowledge 
only  as  manifest  in  nature  and  man.  Man  is  for  Hegel 
part  of  nature  and  Jesus  is  the  highest  point  which  the 
nature  of  God  as  manifest  in  man  has  reached.  In  this 
sense  Hegel  sometimes  even  calls  nature  the  Son  of  God,  and 
mankind  and  Jesus  are  thought  of  as  parts  of  this  one  mani- 
festation of  God.  If  the  Scripture  asserts,  as  it  seemed  to  the 
framers  of  the  creeds  to  do,  that  God  manifested  himself  from 
before  all  worlds  in  and  to  a  self-conscious  personality  like 
his  own,  Hegel  would  answer  :  But  the  Scripture  is  no  third 
source  of  knowledge,  besides  nature  and  man.  Scripture  is 
only  the  record  of  God's  revelation  of  himself  in  and  to  men. 
If  these  men  framed  their  profoundest  thought  in  this  way, 
that  is  only  because  they  lived  in  an  age  when  men  had  all 


70      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

their  thoughts  of  this  sort  in  a  form  which  we  can  historically 
trace.  For  Platonists  and  Neoplatonists,  such  as  the  makers 
of  the  creeds — and  some  portions  of  the  Scripture  show  this 
influence,  as  well — the  divine,  the  ideal,  was  always  thought  of 
as  eternal.  It  always  existed  as  pure  archetype  before  it  ever 
existed  as  historic  fact.  The  rabbins  had  a  speculation  to  the 
same  effect.  The  divine  which  exists  must  have  pre-existed. 
Jesus  as  Son  of  God  could  not  be  thought  of  by  the  ancient 
world  in  any  terms  but  these.  The  divine  was  static,  change- 
lessly  perfect.  For  the  modern  man  the  divinest  of  all  things 
is  the  mystery  of  growth.  The  perfect  man  is  not  at  the 
beginning,  but  far  down  the  immeasurable  series  of  approaches 
to  perfection.  The  perfection  of  other  men  is  the  work  of 
still  other  ages,  in  which  this  extraordinary  and  inexplicable 
moral  magnitude  which  Jesus  is,  has  had  its  influence,  and 
conferred  upon  them  power  to  aid  them  in  the  fulfilment  of 
God's  intent  for  themselves,  which  is  like  that  intent  for 
himself  which  Jesus  has  fulfilled. 

Surely  enough  has  been  said  to  show  that  what  we  have 
hera  is  only  the  absorption  of  even  the  profoundest  religious 
meanings  into  the  vortex  of  an  all- dissolving  metaphysical 
system.  The  most  obvious  meaning  of  the  phrase  '  Son  of 
God,'  its  moral  and  spiritual,  its  real  religious  meaning,  is 
dwelt  on,  here  in  Hegel,  as  little  as  Hegel  claimed  that  the 
Nicene  trinitarians  had  dwelt  upon  it.  Nothing  marks  more 
clearly  the  distance  we  have  travelled  since  Hegel  than  does 
the  general  recognition  that  his  attempted  solution  does  not 
even  lie  in  the  right  direction.  It  is  an  attempt  within  the 
same  area  as  that  of  the  Nicene  Council  and  the  creeds, 
namely,  the  metaphysical  area.  What  is  at  stake  is  not  the 
pre-existence  or  the  two  natures.  Hegel  was  right  in  what  he 
said  concerning  these.  The  pre-existence  cannot  be  thought 
of  except  as  ideal.  The  two  natures  we  assert  for  every  man, 
only  not  in  such  a  manner  as  to  destroy  unity  in  the  per- 
sonality. The  heart  of  the  dogma  is  not  in  these.  It  is  the 
oneness  of  God  and  man,  a  moral  and  spiritual  oneness,  one- 
ness in  conduct  and  consciousness,  the  presence  and  realisation 
of  God,  who  is  spirit,  in  a  real  man,  the  divineness  of  Jesus, 


n.]  IDEALISTIC  PHILOSOPHY  71 

in  a  sense  which  sees  no  meaning  any  longer  in  the  old  debate 
as  between  his  divinity  and  his  deity. 

In  the  light  of  the  new  theory  of  the  universe  which  we  have 
reviewed,  it  flashes  upon  us  that  both  defenders  and  assailants 
of  the  doctrine  of  the  incarnation,  in  the  age-long  debate, 
have  proceeded  from  the  assumption  that  God  and  man  are 
opposites.  Men  contended  for  the  divineness  of  Jesus  in 
terms  which  by  definition  shut  out  his  true  humanity.  They 
asserted  the  identity  of  a  real  man,  a  true  historic  personage, 
wath  an  abstract  notion  of  God  which  had  actually  been 
framed  by  the  denial  of  all  human  qualities.  Their  opponents 
with  a  like  helplessness  merely  reversed  the  situation.  To 
admit  the  deity  of  Jesus  would  have  been  for  them,  in  all 
candour  and  clear-sightedness,  absolutely  impossible,  because 
the  admission  would  have  shut  out  his  true  humanity.  On 
the  old  definitions  we  cannot  wonder  that  the  struggle  was  a 
bitter  one.  Each  party  was  on  its  own  terms  right.  If  God 
is  by  definition  other  than  man,  and  man  the  opposite  of  God, 
then  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  attempt  to  say  that  Jesus 
of  Nazareth  was  both,  remained  mysticism  to  the  one  and 
seemed  folly  to  the  other. 

Now,  within  the  area  of  the  philosophy  which  begins  with 
Kant  this  old  antinomy  has  been  resolved.  An  actual  circle 
of  clear  relations  joins  the  points  of  the  old  hopeless  triangle. 
Men  are  men  because  of  God  indwelling  in  them,  working 
through  them.  The  phrase  *  mere  man  '  is  seen  to  be  a  mere 
phrase.  To  say  that  the  Nazarene,  in  some  way  not  geneti- 
cally to  be  explained,  but  which  is  hidden  within  the  recesses 
of  his  own  personality,  shows  forth  in  incomparable  fulness 
that  relation  of  God  and  man  which  is  the  ideal  for  us  all, 
seems  only  to  be  saying  over  again  what  Jesus  said  when 
he  proclaimed  :  '  I  and  My  Father  are  one.'  That  Jesus 
actualised,  not  absolutely  in  the  sense  that  he  stood  out  of 
relation  to  history,  but  still  perfectly  within  his  relation  to 
history,  that  which  in  us  and  for  us  is  potential,  the  sonship 
of  God — that  seems  a  very  simple  and  intelligible  assertion.  It 
certainly  makes  a  large  part  of  the  debate  of  ages  seem  remote 
from  us.     It  brings  home  to  us  that  we  five  in  a  new  world. 


72      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

Interesting  and  fruitful  is  Hegel's  expansion  of  the  idea 
of  redemption  beyond  that  of  the  individual  to  that  of  the 
whole  humanity,  and  in  every  aspect  of  its  life.  In  my 
relation  to  the  world  are  given  my  duties.  The  renunciation 
of  outward  duty  makes  the  inward  hfe  barren.  The  principle 
which  is  to  transform  the  world  wears  an  aspect  very  different 
from  that  of  stoicism,  of  asceticism  or  even  of  the  individual- 
ism which  has  sought  soul-salvation.  In  the  midst  of  un- 
worthiness  and  helplessness  thej-e  springs  up  the  consciousness 
of  reconciliation.  Man,  with  all  his  imperfections,  becomes 
aware  that  he  is  the  object  of  the  loving  purpose  of  God. 
Still  this  redemption  of  a  man  is  something  which  is  to  be 
worked  out,  in  the  individual  life  and  on  the  stage  of  universal 
history.  The  first  step  beyond  the  individual  life  is  that  of 
the  Church.  It  is  from  within  this  community  of  believers 
that  men,  in  the  rule,  receive  the  impulse  to  the  good.  The 
community  is,  in  its  idea,  a  society  in  which  the  conquest  of 
evil  is  already  being  achieved,  where  the  individual  is  spared 
much  bitter  conflict  and  loneliness.  Nevertheless,  so  long 
as  this  unity  of  the  life  of  man  with  God  is  realised  in  the 
Church  alone  there  remains  a  false  and  harmful  opposition 
between  the  Church  and  the  world.  Religion  is  faced  by  a 
hostile  power  to  which  its  principles  have  no  application. 
The  world  is  denounced  as  unholy.  With  this  stigma  cast 
upon  it,  it  may  be  unholy.  Yet  the  retribution  falls  also 
upon  the  Church,  in  that  it  becomes  artificial,  clerical,  Phari- 
saical. The  end  is  never  that  what  have  been  called  the 
standards  of  the  Church  shall  prevail.  The  end  is  that  the 
Church  shall  be  the  shrine  and  centre  of  an  influence  by 
virtue  of  which  the  standard  of  truth  and  goodness  which 
naturally  belongs  to  any  relation  of  life  shall  prevail.  The 
distinction  between  religion  and  secular  life  must  be  aban- 
doned. Nothing  is  less  sacred  than  a  Church  set  on  its  own 
aggrandisement.  The  relations  of  family  and  of  the  State, 
of  business  and  social  life,  are  to  be  restored  to  the  divineness 
which  belongs  to  them,  or  rather,  the  divineness  which  is  in- 
alienable from  them  is  to  be  recognised.  In  the  laws  and 
customs  of  a  true  State,  Christianity  first  penetrates  with  its 


n.]  IDEALISTIC  PHILOSOPHY  73 

principles  the  real  world.  One  sees  how  large  a  portion  of 
these  thoughts  have  been  taken  up  into  the  programme  of 
modern  social  movements.  They  are  the  basis  of  what  men 
call  a  social  theology.  A  book  like  Fremantle's  World  as  the 
Subject  of  Redemption  is  their  thorough-going  exposition  in 
the  English  tongue. 

We  have  no  cause  to  pursue  the  philosophical  movement 
beyond  this  point.  Its  exponents  are  not  without  interest. 
Especially  is  this  true  of  Schopenhauer.  But  the  deposit 
from  their  work  is  for  our  particular  purpose  not  great. 
The  wonderful  impulse  had  spent  itself.  These  four  briUiant 
men  stand  together,  almost  as  much  isolated  from  the  genera- 
tion which  followed  them  as  from  that  which  went  before. 
The  historian  of  Christian  thought  in  the  nineteenth  century 
cannot  overestimate  the  significance  of  their  personal  interest 
in  reUgion. 


74      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 


CHAPTER  III 

THEOLOGICAL  EECONSTRUCTION 

The  outstanding  trait  of  Kant's  reflection  upon  religion  is 
its  supreme  interest  in  morals  and  conduct.  Metaphysician 
that  he  was,  Kant  saw  the  evil  which  intellectualism  had  done 
to  religion.  Religion  was  a  profoundly  real  thing  to  him  in 
his  own  life.  Religion  is  a  life.  It  is  a  system  of  thought 
only  because  life  is  a  whole.  It  is  a  system  of  thought  only 
in  the  way  of  deposit  from  a  vivid  and  vigorous  life.  A  man 
normally  reflects  on  the  conditions  and  aims  of  what  he  does. 
Religion  is  conduct.  Ends  in  character  are  supreme.  Re- 
ligions and  the  many  interpretations  of  Christianity  have 
been  good  or  bad,  according  as  they  ministered  to  character. 
So  strong  was  this  ethical  trait  in  Kant  that  it  dwarfed  all 
else.  He  was  not  himself  a  man  of  great  breadth  or  richness 
of  feeling.  He  was  not  a  man  of  imagination.  His  religion 
was  austere,  not  to  say  arid.  Hegel  was  before  all  things  an 
intellectualist.  Speculation  was  the  breath  of  life  to  him. 
He  had  metaphysical  gem' us.  He  tended  to  transform  in  this 
direction  everything  which  he  touched.  Religion  is  thought. 
He  criticised  the  rationalist  movement  from  the  height  of 
vantage  which  idealism  had  reached.  But  as  pure  intel- 
lectualist he  would  put  most  rationalists  .to  shame.  We  owe 
to  this  temperament  his  zeal  for  an  interpretation  of  the 
universe  '  all  in  one  piece.'  Its  highest  quality  would  be  its 
abstract  truth.  His  understanding  of  religion  had  the  glory 
and  the  limitations  which  attend  this  view. 

SCHLEIERMACHER 

Between  Kant  and  Hegel  came  another,  Schleiermacher. 
He  too  was  no  mean  philosopher.      But  he  was  essentially 


m.]  THEOLOGICAL  RECONSTRUCTION  76 

a  theologian,  the  founder  of  modern  theology.  He  served  in 
the  same  faculty  with  Hegel  and  was  overshadowed  by  him. 
His  influence  upon  religious  thought  was  less  immediate. 
It  has  been  more  permanent.  It  was  characteristically  upon 
the  side  which  Kant  and  Hegel  had  neglected.  That  was  the 
side  of  feehng.  His  theology  has  been  called  the  theology  of 
feeling.  He  defined  religion  as  feeling.  Christianity  is  for 
him  a  specific  feeling.  Because  he  made  so  much  of  feeling, 
his  name  has  been  made  a  theological  household  word  by 
many  who  appropriated  Httle  else  of  all  he  had  to  teach.  His 
warmth  and  passion,  his  enthusiasm  for  Christ,  the  central 
place  of  Christ  in  his  system,  made  him  loved  by  many  who, 
had  they  understood  him  better,  might  have  loved  him  less. 
For  his  real  greatness  lay,  not  in  the  fact  that  he  possessed 
these  quahties  alone,  but  that  he  possessed  them  in  a 
singularly  beautiful  combination  with  other  qualities.  The 
emphasis  is,  however,  correct.  He  was  the  prophet  of  feeling, 
as  Kant  had  been  of  ethical  religion  and  Hegel  of  the  intel- 
lectuality of  faith.  The  entire  Protestant  theology  of  the 
nineteenth  century  has  felt  his  influence.  The  English- 
speaking  race  is  almost  as  much  his  debtor  as  is  his  own. 
The  French  Huguenots  of  the  revival  felt  him  to  be  one  of 
themselves.  Even  to  Amiel  and  Scherer  he  was  a  kindred 
spirit. 

It  is  a  true  remark  of  Dilthey  that  in  unusual  degree  an 
understanding  of  the  man's  personality  and  career  is  neces- 
sary to  the  appreciation  of  his  thought.  Friedrich  Ernst 
Daniel  Schleiermacher  was  bom  in  1768  in  Breslau,  the  son 
of  a  chaplain  in  the  Reformed  Church.  He  never  connected 
himself  officially  with  the  Lutheran  Church.  We  have 
alluded  to  an  episode  broadly  characteristic  of  his  youth. 
He  was  tutor  in  the  house  of  one  of  the  landed  nobility  of 
Prussia,  curate  in  a  country  parish,  preacher  at  the  Charite 
in  Berlin  in  1795,  professor  extraordinarius  at  Halle  in  1804, 
preacher  at  the  Church  of  the  Dreifaltigkeit  in  Berlin  in  1807, 
professor  of  theology  and  organiser  of  that  faculty  in  the  newly- 
founded  University  of  Berlin  in  1810.  He  never  gave  up  his 
position  as  pastor  and  preacher,  maintaining  this  activity  along 


76      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

with  his  unusual  labours  as  teacher,  executive  and  author. 
He  died  in  1834.  In  his  earlier  years  in  Berlin  he  belonged  to 
the  circle  of  brilliant  men  and  women  who  made  Berlin 
famous  in  those  years.  It  was  a  fashionable  society  com- 
posed of  persons  more  or  less  of  the  rationalistic  school.  Not 
a  few  of  them,  like  the  Schlegels,  were  deeply  tinged  with 
romanticism.  There  were  also  among  them  Jews  of  the  house 
of  the  elder  Mendelssohn.  Morally  it  was  a  society  not 
altogether  above  reproach.  Its  opposition  to  religion  was  a 
by-word.  An  affection  of  the  susceptible  youth  for  a  woman 
unhappily  married  brought  him  to  the  verge  of  despair. 
It  was  an  affection  which  his  passing  pride  as  romanticist 
would  have  made  him  think  it  prudish  to  discard,  while  the 
deep,  underlying  elements  of  his  nature  made  it  inconceivable 
that  he  should  indulge.  Only  in  later  years  did  he  heal  his 
wound  in  a  happy  married  life. 

The  episode  was  typical  of  the  experience  he  was  passing 
through.  He  understood  the  public  with  which  his  first  book 
dealt.  That  book  bears  the  striking  title,  Reden  uber  die 
Religion,  an  die  Gebildeten  unter  ihren  Verdchtern  (translated,/ 
Oman,  Oxford,  1893).  His  public  understood  him.  He  could 
reach  them  as  perhaps  no  other  man  could  do.  If  he  had  ever 
concealed  what  religion  was  to  him,  he  now  paid  the  price. 
If  they  had  made  light  of  him,  he  now  made  war  on  them. 
This  meed  they  could  hardly  withhold  from  him,  that  he 
understood  most  other  things  quite  as  well  as  they,  and 
religion  much  better  than  they.  The  rhetorical  form  is  a 
fiction.  The  addresses  were  never  delivered.  Their  tension 
and  straining  after  effect  is  palpable.  They  are  a  cry  of  pain 
on  the  part  of  one  who  sees  that  assailed  which  is  sacred  to 
him,  of  triumph  as  he  feels  himself  able  to  repel  the  assault, 
of  brooding  persuasiveness  lest  any  should  fail  to  be  won  for 
his  truth.  He  concedes  everything.  It  is  part  of  his  art  to 
go  further  than  his  detractors.  He  is  so  well  versed  in  his  J 
subject  that  he  can  do  that  with  consummate  mastery, 
where  they  are  clumsy  or  dilettante.  It  is  but  a  pale  ghost 
of  religion  that  he  has  left.  But  he  has  attained  his  purpose. 
He  has  vindicated  the  place  of  religion  in  the  life  of  culture. , 


III.]  THEOLOGICAL  RECONSTRUCTION  77 

He  has  shown  the  relation  of  reHgion  to  every  great  thing 
in  civihsation,  its  affinity  with  art,  its  common  quahty  with  I 
poetry,  its  identity  with  all  profound  activities  of  the  soul.' 
These  all  are  religion,  though  their  votaries  know  it  not.  These 
are  reverence  for  the  highest,  dependence  on  the  highest,  self- 
surrender  to  the  highest.  No  great  man  ever  lived,  no  great 
work  was  ever  done,  save  in  an  attitude  toward  the  universe, 
which  is  identical  with  that  of  the  religious  man  toward  God.  J 
The  universe  is  God.  God  is  the  universe.  That  religionists 
have  obscured  this  simple  truth  and  denied  this  grand  relation 
is  true,  and  nothing  to  the  point.  The  cultivated  should  be 
ashamed  not  to  know  this.  Then,  with  a  sympathy  with 
institutional  rehgion  and  a  knowledge  of  history  in  which 
he  stood  almost  alone,  he  retracts  much  that  he  has  yielded, 
he  rebuilds  much  that  he  has  thrown  down,  proclaims  mucli 
which  they  must  now  concede.  The  book  was  pubUshed  in 
1799.  Twenty  years  later  he  said  sadly  that  if  he  were  re- 
writing it,  its  shafts  would  be  directed  against  some  very 
different  persons,  against  ghb  and  smug  people  who  boasted  I 
the  form  of  godliness,  conventional,  even  fashionable  religion- 
ists and  loveless  ecclesiastics.  Vast  and  various  influences  1 
in  the  Germany  of  the  first  two  decades  of  the  century  had 
wrought  for  the  revival  of  religion.  Of  those  influences,  not 
the  least  had  been  that  of  Schleiermacher's  book.  Among 
the  greatest  had  been  Schleiermacher  himself. 

The  religion  of  feeling,  as  advocated  in  the  Reden,  had  left 
much  on  the  ethical  side  to  be  desired.  This  defect  the 
author  sought  to  remedy  in  his  Monologen,  published  in  1800. 
The  programme  of  theological  studies  for  the  new  University 
of  Berlin,  Kurze  Darstellung  des  Theologischen  Studiums,  1811, 
shows  his  theological  system  already  in  large  part  matured. 
His  Der  christliche  Glaube,  published  in  1821,  revised  three 
years  before  his  death  in  1834,  is  his  monumental  work.  His 
Ethik,  his  lectures  upon  many  subjects,  numerous  volumes  of 
sermons,  all  published  after  his  death,  witness  his  versatihty. 
His  sermons  have  the  rare  note  which  one  finds  in  Robertson 
and  Brooks. 

All  of  the  immediacy  of  religion,  its  independence  of  rational  \ 


78      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

argument,  of  historical  tradition  or  institutional  forms,  which 
was  characteristic  of  Schleiermacher  to  his  latest  day,  is 
felt  in  the  Reden.     By  it  he  thrilled  the  hearts  of  men  as  they 

I  have  rarely  been  thrilled.  It  is  not  forms  and  traditions  which 
create  religion.  It  is  religion  which  creates  these.  They 
cannot  exist  without  it.  It  may  exist  without  them,  though 
not  so  well  or  so  effectively.  Religion  is  the  sense  of  God. 
That  sense  we  have,  though  many  call  it  by  another  name. 
It  would  be  more  true  to  say  that  that  sense  has  us.  It  is 
inescapable.  All  who  have  it  are  the  religious.  Those  who 
hold  to  dogmas,  rites,  institutions  in  such  a  way  as  to  obscure 
and  overlay  this  sense  of  God,  those  who  hold  these  as  substi- 
tute for  that  sense,  are  the  nearest  to  being  irreligious.  Any 
form,  the  most  outr^,  bizarre  and  unconventional,  is  good, 
so  only  that  it  helps  a  man  to  God.  All  forms  are  evil,  the 
most  accredited  the  most  evil,  if  they  come  between  a  man 
and  God.  The  pantheism  of  the  thought  of  God  in  all  of 
Schleiermacher's  early  work  is  undeniable.  He  never  wholly 
put  it  aside.  The  personality  of  God  seemed  to  him  a  limita- 
tion. Language  is  here  only  symbolical,  a  mere  expression 
from  an  environment  which  we  know,  flung  out  into  the 
depths  of  that  we  cannot  see.  If  the  language  of  personal 
relations  helps  men  in  living  with  their  truth — well  and 
good.     It  hinders  also.     For  himself  he  felt  that  it  hindered 

f  more  than  helped.  His  definition  of  religion  as  the  feeling 
of  dependence  upon  God,  is  cited  as  evidence  of  the  effect 
upon  him  of  ins  contention  against  the  personalness  of  God. 
Religion  is  also,  it  is  alleged,  the  sentiment  of  fellowship 
with  God.  Fellowship  implies  persons.  But  to  no  man  was 
the  fellowship  with  the  soul  of  his  own  soul  and  of  all  the 
universe  more  real  than  was  that  fellowship  to  Schleier- 
macher. This  was  the  more  true  in  his  maturer  years,  the 
years  of  the  magnificent  rounding  out  of  his  thought.  God 
was  to  him  indeed  not  '  a  man  in  the  next  street.'  What 
he  says  about  the  problem  of  the  personalness  of  God  is 
true.  We  see,  perhaps,  more  clearly  than  did  he  that  the 
debate  is  largely  about  words.  Similarly,  we  may  say  that 
Schleiermacher's  passing  denial  of  the  immortality  of  the 


m.]  THEOLOGICAL  RECONSTRUCTION  79 

soul  was  directed,  in  the  first  instance,   against  the  crass, 
unsocial  and  immoral  view  which  has  disfigured  much  of  the 
teaching  of  religion.     His  contention  was  directed  toward 
that  losing  of  oneself  in  God  through  ideals  and  service  now,  \ 
wliich  in  more  modem  phrase  we  call  the  entrance  upon  the  ) 
immortal  life  here,  the  being  in  eternity  now.     For  a  soul  so 
disposed,  for  a  life  thus  inspired,  death  is  but  an  episode.  . 
For  himself  he  rejoices  to  declare  it  one  to  the  issue  of  which 
he  is  indifferent.     If  he  may  thus  five  with  God  now,  he  cares 
little  whether  or  not  he  shall  live  by  and  by. 

In  his  Monologues  Schleiermacher  first  sets  forth  his  ethical 
thought.  As  it  is  religion  that  a  man  feels  himself  dependent 
upon  God,  so  is  it  the  beginning  of  morahty  that  a  man  feels  f 
his  dependence  upon  his  fellows  and  their  dependence  on  him. 
Slaves  of  their  own.  time  and  circumstance,  men  five  out  their 
lives  in  superficiality  and  isolation.  They  are  a  prey  to  their 
own  selfishness.  They  never  come  into  those  relations  with  their 
fellows  in  which  the  moral  ideal  can  be  realised.  Man  in  his 
isolation  from  his  fellows  is  nothing  and  accomphshes  nothing. 
The  interests  of  the  whole  humanity  are  his  private  interests. 
His  own  happiness  and  welfare  are  not  possible  to  be  secured 
save  through  his  co-operation  with  others,  his  work  and 
service  for  others.  The  happiness  and  welfare  of  others  not 
merely  react  upon  his  own.  They  are  in  a  large  sense  identical 
with  his  own.  This  oneness  of  a  man  with  all  men  is  the  basis 
of  morality,  just  as  the  oneness  of  man  with  God  is  the  basis 
of  religion.  In  both  cases  the  oneness  exists  whether  or  not 
we  know  it.  The  contradictions  and  miseries  into  which  im- 
moral or  unmoral  conduct  plunges  us,  are  the  witness  of  the 
fact  that  tliis  inviolable  unity  of  a  man  with  humanity  is 
operative,  even  if  he  ignores  it.  Often  it  is  his  ignoring  of  this 
relation  which  brings  him  through  misery  to  consciousness 
of  it.  Man  as  moral  being  is  but  an  individuation  of  humanity,  i 
Just  as,  again,  as  religious  being  he  is  but  an  individuation  of 
God.  The  goal  of  the  moral  fife  is  the  absorption  of  self, 
the  elimination  of  self,  which  is  at  the  same  time  the  realisation 
of  self,  through  the  life  and  service  for  others.  The  goal  of 
religion  is  the  elimination  of  self,  the  swallowing  up  of  self,  in 


80      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

the  service  of  God.  In  truth,  the  unity  of  man  with  man  is 
at  bottom  only  another  form  of  his  unity  with  God,  and  the 
service  of  humanity  is  the  identical  service  of  God.  Other 
so-called  services  of  God  are  a  means  to  this,  or  else  an  illusion. 
This  parallel  of  religion  and  morals  is  to  be  set  over  against 
other  passages,  easily  to  be  cited,  in  which  Schleiermacher 
speaks  of  passivity  and  contemplation  as  the  means  of  the 
realisation  of  the  unity  of  man  and  God,  as  if  the  elimina- 
tion of  self  meant  a  sort  of  Nirvana.  Schleiermacher  was 
a  pantheist  and  mystic.  No  philosopher  save  Kant  ever 
influenced  him  half  so  much  as  did  Spinoza.  There  is 
something  almost  oriental  in  his  mood  at  times.  An  occa- 
sional fragment  of  description  of  religion  might  pass  as 
a  better  delineation  of  Buddhism  than  of  Christianity. 
This  universahty  of  his  mind  is  interesting.  These  elements 
have  not  been  unattractive  to  some  portions  of  his  follow- 
ing. One  wearied  with  the  Philistinism  of  the  modern 
popular  urgency  upon  practicality  turns  to  Schleiermacher, 
as  indeed  sometimes  to  Spinoza,  and  says,  here  is  a  man 
who  at  least  knows  what  religion  is.  Yet  nothing  is  further 
from  the  truth  than  to  say  that  Schleiermacher  had  no 
sense  for  the  meaning  of  religion  in  the  outward  life  and 
present  world. 

In  the  Beden  Schleiermacher  had  contended  that  religion 
is  a  condition  of  devout  feeling,  specifically  the  feeling  of 
dependence  upon  God.  This  view  dominates  his  treatment 
of  Christianity.  It  gives  him  his  point  of  departure.  A 
Christian  is  possessed  of  the  devout  feeling  of  dependence 
upon  God  through  Jesus  Christ  or,  as  again  he  phrases  it,  of 
dependence  upon  Christ.  Christianity  is  a  positive  religion 
in  the  sense  that  it  has  direct  relation  to  certain  facts  in  the 
history  of  the  race,  most  of  all  to  the  person  of  Jesus  of 
Nazareth.  But  it  does  not  consist  in  any  positive  propositions 
whatsoever.  These  have  arisen  in  the  process  of  interpre- 
tation of  the  faith.  The  substance  of  the  faith  is  the  ex- 
perience of  renewal  in  Christ,  of  redemption  through  Christ. 
This  inward  experience  is  neither  produced  by  pure  thought 
nor  dependent  upon  it.     Like  all  other  experience  it  is  simply 


m.]  THEOLOGICAL  RECONSTRUCTION  81 

an  object  to  be  described  and  reckoned  with.  Orthodox 
dogmatists  had  held  that  the  content  of  the  Christian 
faith  is  a  doctrine  given  in  revelation.  Schleiermacher  held 
that  it  is  a  consciousness  inspired  primarily  by  the  per- 
sonality of  Jesus.  It  must  be  connected  with  the  other  data 
and  acta  of  our  consciousness  under  the  general  laws  of  the 
operation  of  the  mind.  Against  rationalism  and  much  so- 
called  hberal  Christianity,  Schleiermacher  contended  that 
Christianity  is  not  a  new  set  of  propositions  periodically 
brought  up  to  date  and  proclaimed  as  if  these  alone  were 
true.  New  propositions  can  have  only  the  same  relativity 
of  truth  which  belonged  to  the  old  ones  in  their  day.  They 
may  stand  between  men  and  religion  as  seriously  as  the  others 
had  done. 

The  condition  of  the  heart,  which  is  religion,  the  experience 
through  Jesus  which  is  Christianity,  is  primarily  an  indi- 
vidual matter.  But  it  is  not  solely  such.  It  is  a  common  ex- 
perience also.  Schleiermacher  recognises  the  common  element 
in  the  Christian  consciousness,  the  element  which  shows 
itself  in  the  Christian  experience  of  all  ages,  of  different  races 
and  of  countless  numbers  of  men.  By  this  recognition  of  the 
Christian  Church  in  its  deep  and  spiritual  sense,  Schleier- 
macher hopes  to  escape  the  vagaries  and  eccentricities,  and 
again  the  narrowness  and  bigotries  of  pure  individuahsm. 
Xo  liberal  theologian  until  Schleiermacher  had  had  any 
similar  sense  of  the  meaning  of  the  Christian  Church,  and  of 
the  privilege  and  duty  of  Christian  thought  to  contribute  to 
the  welfare  of  that  body  of  men  believing  in  God  and  following 
Christ  which  is  meant  by  the  Church.  This  is  in  marked 
contrast  with  the  individuahsm  of  Kant.  Of  course,  Schleier- ' 
macher  would  never  have  recognised  as  the  Church  that  part 
of  humanity  which  is  held  together  by  adherence  to  particular  j 
dogmas,  since,  for  him,  Christianity  is  not  dogma.  Still  less  > 
could  he  recognise  as  the  Church  that  part  of  mankind  which 
is  held  together  by  a  common  tradition  of  worship,  or  by  a 
given  theory  of  organisation,  since  these  also  are  historical 
and  incidental.  He  meant  by  the  Church  that  part  of 
humanity,  in  all  places  and  at  all  times,  which  has  been  held 

P 


82      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

together  by  the  common  possession  of  the  Christian  con- 
sciousness and  the  Christian  experience.  The  outhne  of  this 
experience,  the  content  of  this  consciousness,  can  never  be  so 
defined  as  to  make  it  legislatively  operative.  If  it  were  so 
defined  we  should  have  dogma  and  not  Christianity.  Never- 
theless, it  may  be  practically  potent.  The  degree  in  which 
a  given  man  may  justly  identify  his  own  consciousness  and 
experience  with  that  of  the  Christian  world  is  problematical. 
In  Schleiermacher's  own  case,  the  identification  of  some  of 
his  contentions — as,  for  example,  the  thought  that  God  is 
not  personal — with  the  great  Christian  consciousness  of  the 
past,  is  more  than  problematical.  To  this  Schleiermacher 
would  reply  that  if  these  contentions  were  true,  they  would 
become  the  possession  of  spiritual  Christendom  with  the 
lapse  of  time.  Advance  always  originates  with  one  or  a  few. 
If,  however,  in  the  end,  a  given  position  found  no  place 
in  the  consciousness  of  generations  truly  evidencing  their 
Christian  hfe,  that  position  would  be  adjudged  an  idiosyn- 
crasy, a  neghgible  quantity.  This  view  of  Schleiermacher's 
as  to  the  Church  is  suggestive.  It  is  the  undertone  of  a  view 
which  widely  prevails  in  our  own  time.  It  is  somewhat 
difficult  of  practical  combination  with  the  traditional  marks 
of  the  churches,  as  these  have  been  inherited  even  in  Pro- 
testantism from  the  Catholic  age. 

In  a  very  real  sense  Jesus  occupied  the  central  place  in 
Schleiermacher's  system.  This  centralness  of  Jesus  Christ 
he  himself  was  never  weary  of  emphasising.  It  became  in 
the  next  generation  a  favourite  phrase  of  some  who  followed 
Schleiermacher's  pure  and  luminous  spirit  afar  off.  Too 
much  of  a  mystic  to  assert  that  it  is  through  Jesus  alone  that 
we  know  God,  he  yet  accords  to  Jesus  an  absolutely  unique 
place  in  revelation.  It  is  through  the  character  and  per- 
sonality of  Jesus  that  the  change  in  the  character  of  man, 
which  is  redemption,  is  inaugurated  and  sustained.  Re- 
demption is  a  man's  being  brought  out  of  the  condition  in 
which  all  higher  self -consciousness  was  dimmed  and  enfeebled, 
into  one  in  which  this  higher  consciousness  is  vivid  and  strong 
and  the  power  of  self-determination  toward  the  good  has  been 


in.]  THEOLOGICAL  RECONSTRUCTION  83 

restored.  Salvation  is  thus  moral  and  spiritual,  present  as 
well  as  future.  It  is  possible  in  the  future  only  because 
actual  in  the  present.  It  is  the  reconstruction  of  a  man's 
nature  and  life  by  the  action  of  the  spirit  of  God,  conjointly 
with  that  of  man's  own  free  spirit. 

It  is  intelligible  in  Schleiermacher's  context  that  Jesus 
should  be  spoken  of  as  the  sole  redeemer  of  men,  their  only 
hope,  and  that  the  Christian's  dependence  upon  him  should  be 
described  as  absolute.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  the 
idea  of  dependence  upon  Christ  alone  has  been  often,  indeed, 
one  may  say  generally,  associated  with  a  conception  of  sal- 
vation widely  different  from  that  of  Schleiermacher.  It  has 
been  oftenest  associated  with  the  notion  of  something  purely 
external,  forensic,  even  magical.  It  is  connected,  even  down 
to  our  own  time,  with  reliance  upon  the  blood  of  Christ, 
almost  as  if  this  were  externally  applied.  It  has  postulated 
a  propitiatory  sacrifice,  a  vicarious  atonement,  a  completed 
transaction,  something  which  was  laid  up  for  all  and  waiting 
to  be  availed  of  by  some.  Now  every  external,  forensic, 
magical  notion  of  salvation,  as  something  purchased  for  us, 
imputed  to  us,  conferred  upon  us,  would  have  been  utterly 
impossible  to  Schleiermacher.  It  is  within  the  soul  of  man 
that  redemption  takes  place.  Conferment  from 'the  side  of 
God  and  Christ,  or  from  God  through  Christ,  can  be  nothing 
more,  as  also  it  can  be  nothing  less,  than  the  imparting  of 
wisdom  and  grace  and  spiritual  power  from  the  personality 
of  Jesus,  which  a  man  then  freely  takes  up  within  himself 
and  gives  forth  as  from  himself.  The  Christian  consciousness 
contains,  along  with  the  sense  of  dependence  upon  Jesus,  the 
sense  of  moral  alliance  and  spiritual  sympathy  with  him,  of 
a  free  relation  of  the  will  of  man  to  the  will  of  God  as  revealed 
in  Jesus.  The  will  of  man  is  set  upon  the  reproduction 
within  himself,  so  far  as  possible,  of  the  consciousness,  ex- 
perience and  character  of  Jesus. 

The  sin  from  which  man  is  to  be  delivered  is  described  by 
Schleiermacher  thus  :  It  is  the  dominance  of  the  lower  nature 
in  us,  of  the  sense-consciousness.  It  is  the  determination  of 
our  course  of  life  by  the  senses.     This  preponderance  of  the 


84      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

senses  over  the  consciousness  of  God  is  the  secret  of  un- 
happiness,  of  the  feeling  of  defeat  and  misery  in  men,  of  the 
need  of  salvation.  One  has  to  read  Schleiermacher's  phrase, 
'  the  senses '  here,  as  we  read  Paul's  phrase, '  the  flesh.'  On  the 
other  hand,  the  preponderance  of  the  consciousness  of  God, 
the  willing  obedience  to  it  in  every  act  of  life,  becomes  to  us 
the  secret  of  strength  and  of  blessedness  in  life.  This  is  the 
special  experience  of  the  Christian.  It  is  the  effect  of  the 
impulse  and  influence  of  Christ.  We  receive  this  impulse  in 
a  manner  wholly  consistent  with  the  laws  of  our  psychological 
and  moral  being.  We  carry  forward  this  impulse  with  vary- 
ing fortunes  and  by  free  will.  It  comes  to  us,  however,  from 
without  and  from  above,  through  one  who  was  indeed  true 
man,  but  who  is  also,  in  a  manner  not  further  explicable,  to 
be  identified  with  the  moral  ideal  of  humanity.  This  identi- 
fication of  Jesus  with  the  moral  ideal  is  complete  and  un- 
questioning with  Schleiermacher.  It  is  visible  in  the  inter- 
changeable use  of  the  titles  Jesus  and  Christ.  Our  saving 
consciousness  of  God  could  proceed  from  the  person  of  Jesus 
only  if  that  consciousness  were  actually  present  in  Jesus 
in  an  absolute  measure.  Ideal  and  person  in  him  perfectly 
coincide. 

As  typical  and  ideal  man,  according  to  Schleiermacher, 
Jesus  was  distinguished  from  all  other  founders  of  religions. 
These  come  before  us  as  men  chosen  from  the  number  of 
their  fellows,  receiving,  quite  as  much  for  themselves  as  for 
others,  that  which  they  received  from  God.  It  is  nowhere 
implied  that  Jesus  himself  was  in  need  of  redemption,  but 
rather  that  he  alone  possessed  from  earliest  years  the  fulness 
of  redemptive  power.  He  was  distinguished  from  other  men 
by  his  absolute  moral  perfection.  This  excluded  not  merely 
actual  sin,  but  all  possibility  of  sin  and,  accordingly,  all  real 
moral  struggle.  This  perfection  was  characterised  also  by 
his  freedom  from  error.  He  never  originated  an  erroneous 
notion  nor  adopted  one  from  others  as  a  conviction  of  his 
own.  In  this  respect  his  person  was  a  moral  miracle  in  the 
midst  of  the  common  life  of  our  humanity,  of  an  order  to 
be  explained  only  by  a  new  spiritually  creative  act  of  God. 


m.]  THEOLOGICAL  RECONSTRUCTION  86 

On  the  other  hand,  Schleiermacher  says  squarely  that  the 
absence  of  the  natural  paternal  participation  in  the  origin 
of  the  physical  life  of  Jesus,  according  to  the  account  in  the 
first  and  third  Gospels,  would  add  nothing  to  the  moral 
miracle  if  it  could  be  proved  and  detract  notliing  if  it 
should  be  taken  away.  Singular  is  this  ability  on  the  part  of 
Schleiermacher  to  beheve  in  the  moral  miracle,  not  upon  its 
o\\Ti  terms,  of  which  we  shall  speak  later,  but  upon  terms 
upon  which  the  outward  and  physical  miracle,  commonly 
so-called,  had  become,  we  need  not  say  incredible,  but  un- 
necessary to  Schleiermacher  himself.  Singular  is  this  whole 
part  of  Schleiermacher's  construction,  Tvdth  its  lapse  into 
abstraction  of  the  famihar  sort,  of  which,  in  general,  the  work- 
ing of  his  miad  had  been  so  free.  For  surely  what  we  here 
have  is  abstraction.  It  is  an  undissolved  fragment  of  meta- 
physical theology.  It  is  impossible  of  combination  with  the 
historical.  It  is  wholly  unnecessary  for  the  religious  view 
of  salvation  which  Schleiermacher  had  distiactly  taken.  It 
is  surprising  how  slow  men  have  been  to  learn  that  the 
absolute  cannot  be  historic  nor  the  historic  absolute. 

Surely  the  claim  that  Jesus  was  free  from  error  in  iateUectual 
conception  is  unnecessary,  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  saving 
influence  upon  character  which  Schleiermacher  had  asserted. 
It  is  in  contradiction  with  the  view  of  revelation  to  which 
Schleiermacher  had  already  advanced.  It  is  to  be  accounted 
for  only  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  mistaken  assumption 
that  the  divine,  even  in  manifestation,  must  be  perfect,  in  the 
sense  of  that  which  is  static  and  not  of  that  which  is  dynamic. 
The  assertion  is  not  sustained  from  the  Gospel  itself.  It 
reduces  many  aspects  of  the  life  of  Jesus  to  mere  semblance. 
That  also  which  is  claimed  in  regard  to  the  abstract  impossi- 
bility of  sin  upon  the  part  of  Jesus  is  in  hopeless  contradiction 
with  that  which  Schleiermacher  had  said  as  to  the  normal  and 
actual  development  of  Jesus,  in  moral  as  also  in  all  other  ways. 
Such  development  is  impossible  without  struggle.  Struggle 
is  not  real  when  failure  is  impossible.  So  far  as  we  know,  it 
is  in  struggle  only  that  character  is  made.  Even  as  to  the 
actual  commission  of  sin  on  Jesus'  part,  the  assertion  of  the 


86      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

abstract  necessity  of  his  sinlessness,  for  the  work  of  moral 
redemption,  goes  beyond  anything  which  we  know.  The 
question  of  the  sinlessness  of  Jesus  is  not  an  a  priori  question. 
To  say  that  he  was  by  conception  free  from  sin  is  to  beg  the 
question.  We  thus  form  a  conception  and  then  read  the 
Gospels  to  find  evidence  to  sustain  it.  To  say  that  he  did, 
though  tempted  in  all  points  like  as  we  are,  yet  so  conduct 
himself  in  the  mystery  of  life  as  to  remain  unstained,  is  indeed 
to  allege  that  he  achieved  that  which,  so  far  as  we  know,  is 
without  parallel  in  the  history  of  the  race.  But  it  is  to  leave 
him  true  man,  and  so  the  moral  redeemer  of  men  who  would 
be  true.  To  say  that,  if  he  were  true  man,  he  must  have 
sinned,  is  again  to  beg  the  question.  Let  us  repeat  that  the 
question  is  one  of  evidence.  To  say  that  he  was,  though  true 
man,  so  far  as  we  have  any  evidence  in  fact,  free  from  sin,  is 
only  to  say  that  his  humanity  was  uniquely  penetrated  by 
the  spirit  of  God  for  the  purposes  of  the  life  which  he  had  to 
live.  That  heart-broken  recollection  of  his  own  sin  which 
one  hears  in  The  Scarlet  Letter,  giving  power  to  the  preacher 
who  would  reach  men  in  their  sins,  has  not  the  remotest 
parallel  in  any  reminiscence  of  Jesus  which  we  possess.  There 
is  every  evidence  of  the  purity  of  Jesus'  consciousness.  There 
is  no  evidence  of  the  consciousness  of  sin.  There  is  a  passage 
in  the  Discourses,  in  which  Schleiermacher  himself  declared 
that  the  identification  of  the  fundamental  idea  of  religion 
with  the  historical  fact  in  which  that  religion  had  its  rise, 
was  a  mistake.  Surely  it  is  exactly  this  mistake  which 
Schleiermacher  has  here  made. 

It  will  be  evident  from  all  that  has  been  said  that  to 
Schleiermacher  the  Scripture  was  not  the  foundation  of  faith. 
As  such  it  was  almost  universally  regarded  in  his  time.  The 
New  Testament,  he  declared,  is  itself  but  a  product  of  the 
Christian  consciousness.  It  is  a  record  of  the  Christian 
experience  of  the  men  of  the  earlier  time.  To  us  it  is  a  means 
of  grace  because  it  is  the  vivid  and  original  register  of  that 
experience.  The  Scriptures  can  be  regarded  as  the  work  of 
the  Holy  Spirit  only  in  so  far  as  this  was  this  common  spirit 
of  the  early  Church.     This  spirit  has  borne  witness  to  Christ 


imj  THEOLOGICAL  RECONSTRUCTION  87 

in  these  writings  not  essentially  otherwise  than  in  later  writ- 
ings, only  more  at  first  hand,  more  under  the  impression  of 
intercourse  with  Jesus.  Least  of  all  may  we  base  the  authority 
of  Scripture  upon  a  theory  of  inspiration  such  as  that  gener- 
ally current  in  Schleiermacher's  time.  It  is  the  personality 
of  Jesus  which  is  the  inspiration  of  the  New  Testament. 
Christian  faith,  including  the  faith  in  the  Scriptures,  can  rest 
only  upon  the  total  impression  of  the  character  of  Jesus. 

In  the  same  manner  Schleiermacher  speaks  of  miracles. 
These  cannot  be  regarded  in  the  conventional  manner  as 
supports  of  religion,  for  the  simplest  of  all  reasons.  They 
presuppose  religion  and  faith  and  must  be  understood  by 
means  of  these.  The  accounts  of  external  miracles  contained 
in  the  Gospels  are  matters  for  unhesitating  criticism.  The 
Christian  finds,  for  moral  reasons  and  because  of  the  response 
of  his  own  heart,  the  highest  revelation  of  God  in  Jesus  Christ. 
Extraordinary  events  may  be  expected  in  Jesus'  career.  Yet 
these  can  be  called  miracles  only  relatively,  as  containing 
something  extraordinary  for  contemporary  knowledge.  They 
may  remain  to  us  events  wholly  inexplicable,  illustrating  a 
law  higher  than  any  which  we  yet  know.  Therewith  they  are 
not  taken  out  of  the  realm  of  the  orderly  phenomena  of  nature. 
In  other  words,  the  notion  of  the  miraculous  is  purely  sub- 
jective. What  is  a  miracle  for  one  age  may  be  no  miracle  in 
the  view  of  the  next.  Whatever  the  deeds  of  Jesus  may  have 
been,  however  inexpHcable  all  ages  may  find  them,  we  can 
but  regard  them  as  merely  natural  consequences  of  the  per- 
sonality of  Jesus,  unique  because  he  was  unique.  '  In  the 
interests  of  religion  the  necessity  can  never  arise  of  regarding 
an  event  as  taken  out  of  its  connection  with  nature,  in  conse- 
quence of  its  dependence  upon  God.' 


It  is  not  possible  within  the  compass  of  this  book  to  do  more 
than  deal  with  typical  and  representative  persons.  Schleier- 
macher  was   epoch-making.      He  gathered    in    himself   the 


88      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

creative  impulses  of  the  preceding  period.  The  characteristic 
theological  tendencies  of  the  two  succeeding  generations  may- 
be traced  back  to  him.  Many  men  worked  in  seriousness  upon 
the  theological  problem.  No  one  of  them  marks  an  era  again 
until  we  come  to  Ritschl.  The  theologians  of  the  interval 
between  Schleiermacher  and  Ritschl  have  been  divided  into 
three  groups.  The  first  group  is  of  distinctly  philosophical 
tendency.  The  influence  of  Hegel  was  felt  upon  them  all. 
To  this  group  belong  Schweitzer,  Biedermann,  Lipsius,  and 
Pfleiderer.  The  influence  of  Hegel  was  greatest  upon  Bieder- 
mann, least  upon  Lipsius.  An  estimate  of  the  influence  of 
Schleiermacher  would  reverse  that  order.  Especially  did 
Lipsius  seek  to  lay  at  the  foundation  of  his  work  that  exact 
psychological  study  of  the  phenomena  of  religion  which 
Schleiermacher  had  declared  requisite.  It  is  possible  that 
Lipsius  will  more  nearly  come  to  his  own  when  the  enthusiasm 
for  Ritschl  has  waned.  The  second  group  of  Schleiermacher's 
followers  took  the  direction  opposite  to  that  which  we  have 
named.  They  were  the  confessional  theologians.  Hoffmann 
shows  himself  learned,  acute  and  full  of  power.  One  does 
not  see,  however,  why  his  method  should  not  prove  anything 
which  any  confession  ever  claimed.  He  sets  out  from 
Schleiermacher's  declaration  concerning  the  content  of  the 
Christian  consciousness.  In  Hoffmann's  own  devout  con- 
sciousness there  had  been  response,  since  his  childhood,  to  every 
item  which  the  creed  alleged.  Therefore  these  items  must 
have  objective  truth.  One  is  reminded  of  an  English  parallel 
in  Newman's  Grammar  of  Assent.  Yet  another  group,  that 
of  the  so-called  mediating  theologians,  contains  some  well- 
known  names.  Here  belong  Nitzsch,  Rothe,  Miiller,  Dorner. 
The  name  had  originally  described  the  effort  to  find,  in  the 
Union,  common  ground  between  Lutherans  and  Reformed. 
In  the  fact  that  it  made  the  creeds  of  little  importance 
and  fell  back  on  Schleiermacher's  emphasis  upon  feeling,  the 
movement  came  to  have  the  character  also  of  an  attempt  to 
find  a  middle  way  between  confessionalists  and  rationalists. 
Its  representatives  had  often  the  kind  of  breadth  of  sympathy 
which  goes  with  lack  of  insight,  rather  than  that  breadth  of 


m.]  THEOLOGICAL  RECONSTRUCTION  89 

sympathy  which  is  due  to  the  possession  of  insight.  Yet 
Rothe  rises  to  real  distinction,  especially  in  his  forecast  of  the 
social  interpretation  of  religion.  With  the  men  of  this  group 
arose  a  speculation  concerning  the  person  of  Christ  which 
for  a  time  had  some  currency.  It  was  called  the  theory  of 
the  kenosis.  Jesus  is  spoken  of  in  a  famous  passage  of  the 
letter  to  the  Philippians,  as  having  emptied  himself  of  divine 
quaUties  that  he  might  be  found  in  fashion  as  a  man.  In 
this  speculation  the  divine  attributes  were  divided  into  two 
classes.  Of  the  one  class  it  was  held  Christ  had  emptied 
himself  in  becoming  flesh,  or  at  least  he  had  them  in  abeyance. 
He  had  them,  but  did  not  use  them.  Whs^t  we  have  here  is 
but  a  despairing  effort  to  be  just  to  Jesus'  humanity  and 
yet  to  assert  his  deity  in  the  ancient  metaphysical  terms.  It 
is  but  saying  yes  and  no  in  the  same  breath.  Biedermann 
said  sadly  of  the  speculation  that  it  represented  the  kenosis, 
not  of  the  divine  nature,  but  of  the  human  understanding. 

RiTSCHL   AND    THE    RiTSCHLIANS 

If  any  man  in  the  department  of  theology  in  the  latter  half 
of  the  nineteenth  century  attained  a  position  such  as  to  entitle 
him  to  be  compared  with  Schleiermacher,  it  was  Ritschl.  He 
was  long  the  most  conspicuous  figure  in  any  chair  of  dogmatic 
theology  in  Germany.  He  established  a  school  of  theological 
thinkers  in  a  sense  in  which  Schleiermacher  never  desired  to 
gain  a  following.  He  exerted  ecclesiastical  influence  of  a  kind 
which  Schleiermacher  never  sought.  He  was  involved  in 
controversy  in  a  degree  to  which  the  life  of  Schleiermacher 
presents  no  parallel.  He  was  not  a  preacher,  he  was  no  philo- 
sopher. He  was  not  a  man  of  Schleiermacher's  breadth  of 
interest.  His  intellectual  history  presents  more  than  one 
breach  within  itself,  as  that  of  Schleiermacher  presented 
none,  despite  the  wide  arc  which  he  traversed.  Of  Ritschl, 
as  of  Schleiermacher,  it  may  be  said  that  he  exerted  a 
great  influence  over  many  who  have  only  in  part  agreed 
with  him. 

Albrecht  Ritschl  was  bom  in  1822  in  Berlin,  the  son  of  a 


90      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT   [ch. 

bishop  in  the  Lutheran  Church.  He  was  educated  at  Bonn 
and  at  Tubingen.  He  estabhshed  himself  at  Bonn,  where, 
in  1853,  he  became  professor  extraordinarius  and  in  1860 
ordinarius.  In  1864  he  was  called  to  Gottingen.  In  1874  he 
became  consistorialrath  in  the  new  Prussian  establishment 
for  the  Hanoverian  Church.  He  died  in  1888.  These  are 
the  simple  outward  facts  of  a  somewhat  stormy  professional 
career.  There  was  pietistic  influence  in  Ritschl's  ancestry, 
as  also  in  Schleiermacher's.  Ritschl  had,  however,  reacted 
violently  against  it.  His  attitude  was  that  of  repudiation  of 
everything  mystical.  He  had  strong  aversion  to  the  type 
of  piety  which  rested  its  assurance  solely  upon  inward  ex- 
perience. This  aversion  is  one  root  of  the  historic  positivism 
wliich  makes  him,  at  the  last,  assert  the  worthlessness  of  all 
supposed  revelations  outside  of  the  Bible  and  of  all  supposed 
Christian  experience  apart  from  the  influence  of  the  historical 
Christ.  He  began  his  career  under  the  influence  of  Hegel. 
He  came  to  the  position  in  which  he  felt  that  the  sole  hope 
for  theology  was  in  the  elimination  from  it  of  all  metaphysical 
elements.  He  felt  that  none  of  his  predecessors  had  carried 
out  Schleiermacher's  dictum,  that  religion  is  not  thought, 
but  religious  thought  only  one  of  the  functions  of  religion. 
Yet,  of  course,  he  was  not  able  to  discuss  fundamental  theo- 
logical questions  without  philosophical  basis,  particularly  an 
exphcit  theory  of  knowledge.  His  theory  of  knowledge  he 
had  derived  eclectically  and  somewhat  eccentrically,  from 
Lotze  and  Kant.  To  this  day  not  all,  either  of  his  friends 
or  foes,  are  quite  certain  what  it  was.  It  is  open  to  doubt 
whether  Ritschl  really  arrived  at  his  theory  of  cognition 
and  then  made  it  one  of  the  bases  of  his  theology.  It  is  con- 
ceivable that  he  made  his  theology  and  then  propounded 
his  theory  of  cognition  in  its  defence.  In  a  word,  the  basis 
of  distinction  between  religious  and  scientific  knowledge  is 
not  to  be  sought  in  its  object.  It  is  to  be  found  in  the  sphere 
of  the  subject,  in  the  difference  of  attitude  of  the  subject 
toward  the  object.  Religion  is  concerned  with  what  he  calls 
Werthurtheile,  judgments  of  value,  considerations  of  our  J 
relation  to  the  world,  which  are  of  moment  solely  in  accord- 


m.]  THEOLOGICAL  RECONSTRUCTION  91 

ance  with  their  value  in  awakening  feeUngs  of  pleasure  or  of 
pain.  The  thought  of  God,  for  example,  must  be  treated 
solely  as  a  judgment  of  value.  It  is  a  conception  which  is 
of  worth  for  the  attainment  of  good,  for  our  spiritual  peace 
and  victory  over  the  world.  What  God  is  in  himself  we 
cannot  know,  an  existential  judgment  we  cannot  form  without  j 
going  over  to  the  metaphysicians.  What  God  is  to  us  we 
can  know  simply  as  religious  men  and  solely  upon  the  basis  1 
of  religious  experience.  God  is  holy  love.  That  is  a  religious 
value-judgment.  But  what  sort  of  a  being  God  must  be 
in  order  that  we  may  assign  to  him  these  attributes,  we 
cannot  say  without  leaving  the  basis  of  experience.  This 
is  pragmatism  indeed.  It  opens  up  boundless  possibihties 
of  subjectivism  in  a  man  who  was  apparently  only  too 
matter-of-fact. 

There  was  a  time  in  his  career  when  Ritschl  was  popular 
with  both  conservatives  and  liberals.  There  were  long 
years  in  which  he  was  bitterly  denounced  by  both.  Yet 
there  was  something  in  the  man  and  in  his  teaching  which 
went  beyond  all  the  antagonisms  of  the  schools.  There  can 
be  no  doubt  that  it  was  the  intention  of  Ritschl  to  build  his  1 
theology  solely  upon  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ.  The  joy 
and  confidence  with  which  this  theology  could  be  preached, 
Ritschl  awakened  in  his  pupils  in  a  degree  which  had  not 
been  equalled  by  any  theologian  since  Schleiermacher  himself. 
Numbers  who,  in  the  time  of  philosophical  and  scientific  un- 1 
certainty,  had  lost  their  courage,  regained  it  in  contact  with! 
his  confident  and  deeply  religious  spirit.  A  wholesome 
nature,  eminently  objective  in  temper,  concentrated  with  all 
his  force  upon  his  task,  of  rare  dialectical  gifts,  he  had  a  great 
sense  of  humour  and  occasionally  also  the  faculty  of  bitterly 
sarcastic  speech.  His  very  figure  radiated  the  delight  of 
conflict  as  he  walked  the  Gottingen  wall. 

A  devoted  pupil,  writing  immediately  after  Ritschl's  death, 
used   concerning   Schleiermacher  a   phrase   which    we    may 
transfer  to  Ritschl  himself.     '  One  wonders  whether  such  a  i 
theology  ever  existed  as  a  connected  whole,  except  in  the  mind  I 
of  its  originator.     Neither  by  those  about  him,  nor  by  those 


92      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

after  him,  has  it  been  reproduced  in  its  entirety  or  free  from 
glaring  contradictions.'     It  was  not  free  from  contradictions 
in  Ritschl's  own  mind.     His  pupils  divided  his  inheritance 
among  them.     Each  appropriated  that  which  accorded  with 
his  own  way  of  looking  at  things  and  viewed  the  remainder 
as  something  which  might  be  left  out  of  the  account.     It  is 
long  since  one  could  properly  speak  of  a  Ritschhan  school. 
It  will  be  long  until  we  shall  cease  to  reckon  with  a  Ritschlian 
influence.     He  did  yeoman  service  in  breaking  down  the  high 
Lutheran  confessionalism  which  had  been  the  order  of  the 
day.     In  his  recognition  of  the  excesses  of  the  Tiibingen 
school  all  would  now  agree.     In  his  feeling  against  merej 
sentimentalities  of  piety  many  sympathise.     In  his  emphasis) 
upon  the  ethical  and  practical,  in  his  urgency  upon  the  actuai 
problem  of  a  man's  vocation  in  the  world,  he  meets  in  striking^ 
manner  the  temper  of  our  age.     In  his  emphasis  upon  the 
social  factor  in  religion,  he  represents  a  popular  phase  of  \ 
thought.     With  all  of  this,  it  is  strange  to  find  a  man  of  so    I 
much  learning  who  had  so  little  sympathy  with  the  com- 
parative study  of  religions,  who  was  such  a  dogmatist  on 
behalf  of  his  own  inadequate  notion  of  revelation,  the  logical  I 
effect  of  whose  teaching  concerning  the  Church  would  be  the 
revival  of  an  institutionalism  and  extemalism  such  as  Pro- 
testantism has  hardly  known. 

Since  Schleiermacher  the  German  theologians  had  made 
the  problem  of  the  person  of  Christ  the  centre  of  discussion. 
In  the  same  period  the  problem  of  the  person  of  Christ  had 
been  the  central  point  of  debate  in  America.  Here,  as  there, 
all  the  other  points  arranged  themselves  about  this  one. 
The  new  movement  which  went  out  from  Ritschl  took  as  its 
centre  the  work  of  Christ  in  redemption.  This  is  obvious 
from  the  very  title  of  Ritschl's  great  book,  Die  Christliche 
Lehre  von  der  Rechtfertigung  und  Versohnung.  Of  this  work  the 
first  edition  of  the  third  and  significant  volume  was  published 
in  1874.  Before  that  time  the  formal  treatises  on  theology  had 
followed  a  traditional  order  of  topics.  It  had  been  assumed  . 
as  self-evident  that  one  should  speak  of  a  person  before  / 
one  talked  of  his  work.     It  did  not  occur  to  the  theologians  J 


HL]  THEOLOGICAL  RECONSTRUCTION  93 

that  in  the  case  of  the  divine  person,  at  all  events,  we  can 
securely  say  that  we  know  something  as  to  his  work.  Much 
concerning  his  person  must  remain  a  mystery  to  us,  exactly 
because  he  is  divine.  Our  safest  course,  therefore,  would  be 
to  infer  the  unknown  qualities  of  his  person  from  the  known 
traits  of  his  work.  Certainly  this  would  be  true  as  to  the 
work  of  God  in  nature.  This  was  not  the  way,  however,  in 
which  the  minds  of  theologians  worked.  The  habit  of  deal- 
ing with  conceptions  as  if  they  were  facts  had  too  deep 
hold  upon  them.  So  long  as  men  believed  in  revelation  as 
giving  them,  not  primarily  God  and  the  transcendental 
world  itself,  but  information  about  God  and  the  transcen- 
dental, they  naturally  held  that  they  knew  as  much  of  the 
persons  of  God  and  Christ  as  of  their  works. 

Schleiermacher  had  opened  men's  eyes  to  the  fact  that  the  i 
great  work  of  Christ  in  redemption  is  an  inward  one,  an  I 
ethical  and  spiritual  work,  the  transformation  of  character.  ) 
He  had  said,  not  merely  that  the  transformation  of  man's 
character  follows  upon  the  work  of  redemption.     It  is  the 
work  of  redemption.     The  primary  witness  to  the  work  of 
Christ  is,  therefore,  in  the  facts  of  consciousness  and  history. 
These    are    capable    of    empirical    scrutiny.     They    demand 
psychological   investigation.     When   thus   investigated   they 
yield  our  primary  material  for  any  assertion  we  may  make 
concerning  God.     Above  all,   it  is  the  nature  of  Jesus,  as 
learned  on  the  evidence  of  his  work  in  the  hearts  of  men, 
which  is  our  great  revelation  and  source  of  inference  concern- 
ing the  nature  of  God.     Instead  of  saying  in  the  famous 
phrase,  that  the  Christians  think  of  Christ  as  God,  we  say  that 
we  are  able  to  think  of  God,  as  a  religious  magnitude,  in  noN 
other  terms  than  in  those  of  his  manifestation  and  redemptive  j 
activity  in  Jesus. 

None  since  Kant,  except  extreme  confessionaHsts,  and 
these  in  diminishing  degree,  have  held  that  the  great  effect 
of  the  work  of  Christ  was  upon  the  mind  and  attitude  of  God. 
Less  and  less  have  men  thought  of  justification  as  forensic 
and  Judicial,  a  declaring  sinners  righteous  in  the  eye  of  the 
divine  law,  the  attribution  of  Christ's  righteousness  to  men, 


94      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

so  far  at  least  as  to  relieve  these  last  of  penalty.  This  was  the 
Anselmic  scheme.  Indeed,  it  had  been  Tertullian's.  Less 
and  less  have  men  thought  of  reconciliation  as  that  of  an 
angry  God  to  men,  more  and  more  as  of  alienated  men  with 
God.  The  phrases  of  the  orthodoxy  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  Lutheran  as  well  as  Calvinistic,  survive.  More  and 
more  new  meaning,  not  always  consistent,  is  injected  into 
them.  No  one  would  deny  that  the  loftiest  moral  enthusiasm, 
the  noblest  sense  of  duty,  animated  the  hearts  of  many  who 
thought  in  the  terms  of  Calvinism.  The  delineation  of  God 
as  unreconciled,  of  the  work  and  sufferings  of  Christ  as  a 
substitution,  of  salvation  as  a  conferment,  caused  gratitude, 
tender  devotion,  heroic  allegiance  in  some.  It  worked  re- 
vulsion in  others.  It  was  protested  against  most  radically  by 
Kant,  as  indeed  it  had  been  condemned  by  many  before  him. 
For  Kant  the  renovation  of  character  was  the  essential  sal- 
vation. Yet  the  development  of  his  doctrine  was  deficient 
through  the  individualistic  form  which  it  took.  Salvation 
was  essentially  a  change  in  the  individual  mind,  brought 
about  through  the  practical  reason,  and  having  its  ideal  in 
Jesus.  Yet  for  Kant  our  salvation  had  no  closer  relation 
to  the  historic  revelation  in  Jesus.  Furthermore,  so  much 
was  this  change  an  individual  issue  that  we  may  say  that  the 
actualisation  of  redemption  would  be  the  same  for  a  given 
man,  were  he  the  only  man  in  the  universe.  To  hold  fast  to 
the  ethical  idealism  of  Kant,  and  to  overcome  its  subjectivity 
and  individualism,  was  the  problem. 

The  reference  to  experience  which  underlies  all  that  was 
said  above  was  particularly  congruous  with  the  mood  of  an 
age  grown  weary  of  Hegelianism  and  much  impressed  with 
the  value  of  the  empirical  method  in  all  the  sciences.  An- 
other great  contention  of  our  age  is  for  the  recognition  of  the 
value  of  what  is  social.  Its  emphasis  is  upon  that  which 
binds  men  together.  Salvation  is  not  normally  achieved 
except  in  the  life  of  a  man  among  and  for  his  fellows.  It  is 
by  doing  one's  duty  that  one  becomes  good.  One  is  saved, 
not  in  order  to  become  a  citizen  of  heaven  by  and  by,  but  in 
Qider  to  be  an  active  citizen  of  a  kingdom  of  real  human 


in.]  THEOLOGICAL  RECONSTRUCTION  95 

goodness  here  and  now.  In  reality  no  man  is  being  saved, 
except  as  he  does  actively  and  devotedly  belong  to  that 
kingdom.  The  individual  would  hardly  be  in  God's  eyes 
worth  the  saving,  except  in  order  that  he  might  be  the  instru- 
mentality of  the  realisation  of  the  kingdom.  These  are  ideas 
which  it  is  possible  to  exaggerate  in  statement  or,  at  least, 
to  set  forth  in  all  the  isolation  of  their  quality  as  half-truths. 
But  it  is  hardly  possible  to  exaggerate  their  significance  as 
a  reversal  of  the  immemorial  one-sidedness,  inadequacy,  and 
artificiality  both  of  the  official  statement  and  of  the  popular 
apprehension  of  Christianity.  These  ideas  appeal  to  men  in 
our  time.  They  are  popular  because  men  think  them  already. 
Men  are  pleased,  even  when  somewhat  incredulous,  to  learn 
that  Christianity  will  bear  this  social  interpretation.  Most 
Christians  are  in  our  time  overwhelmingly  convinced  that 
in  this  direction  Hes  the  interpretation  which  Christianity 
must  bear,  if  it  is  to  do  the  work  and  meet  the  needs  of  the 
age.  Its  consonance  with  some  of  the  truths  underlying 
socialism  may  account,  in  a  measure,  for  the  influence  which 
the  Ritschlian  theology  has  had. 

As  was  indicated,  Ritschl's  epoch-making  book  bears  the  i 
title.  The  Christian  Doctrine  of  Justification  and  Reconciliation.  \ 
The  book  might  be  described  in  the  language  of  the  schools 
as  a  monograph  upon  one  great  dogma    of  the  Christian 
faith,  around  which,  as  the  author  treats  it,  all  the  other 
doctrines  are  arranged.     The  familiar  topic  of  justification,) 
of  which  Luther  made  so  much,  was  thus  given  again  the 
central  place.     What  the  book  really  offered  was  something 
quite  different  from  this.     It  was  a  complete  system  of  theo-  | 
logy,  but  it  differed  from  the  traditional  systems  of  theology.  ^ 
These  had  followed  helplessly  a  logical  scheme  which  begins 
with  God  as  he  is  in  himself  and  apart  from  any  knowledge 
which  we  have  of  him.     They  then  slowly  proceeded  to  man 
and  sin  and  redemption,  one  empirical  object  and  two  concrete 
experiences  which  we  may  know  something  about.     Ritschl 
reversed  the  process.     He  aimed  to  begin  with  certain  facts  of  I 
life.     Such  facts  are  sin  and  the  consciousness  of  forgiveness, 
awareness  of  restoration  to  the  will  and  power  of  goodness, 


96      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [en. 

the  gift  of  love  and  of  a  spirit  which  can  feel  itself  victorious 
even  in  the  midst  of  ills  in  life,  confidence  that  this  life 
is  not  all.  These  phrases,  taken  together,  would  describe 
the  consciousness  of  salvation.  This  consciousness  of  sin 
and  salvation  is  a  fact  in  individual  men.  It  has  evidently 
been  a  fact  in  the  life  of  masses  of  men  for  many  generations. 
The  facts  have  thus  a  psychology  and  a  history  from  which 
reflection  on  the  phenomenon  of  faith  must  take  its  departure. 
There  is  no  reason  why,  upon  this  basis,  and  until  it  departs 
from  the  scientific  methods  which  are  given  with  the  nature 
of  its  object,  theology  should  not  be  as  truly  a  science  as  is 
any  other  known  among  men. 

This  science  starts  with  man,  who  is  the  object  of  many 
other  sciences.  It  confines  itself  to  man  in  this  one  aspect  of 
his  relation  to  moral  life  and  to  the  transcendent  meaning  of 
the  universe.  It  notes  the  fact  that  men,  when  awakened, 
usually  have  the  sense  of  not  being  in  harmony  with  the  life 
of  the  universe  or  on  the  way  to  realisation  of  its  meaning. 
It  notes  the  fact  that  many  men  have  had  the  consciousness 
of  progressive  restoration  to  that  harmony.  It  inquires  as  to 
the  process  of  that  restoration.  It  asks  as  to  the  power  of  it. 
It  discovers  that  that  power  is  a  personal  one.  Men  have 
believed  that  this  power  has  been  exerted  over  them,  either 
in  personal  contact,  or  across  the  ages  and  through  genera- 
tions of  believers,  by  one  Jesus,  whom  they  call  Saviour. 
They  have  believed  that  it  was  God  who  through  Jesus 
saved  them.  Jesus'  consciousness  thus  became  to  them  a 
revelation  of  God.  The  thought  leads  on  to  the  considera- 
tion of  that  which  a  saved  man  does,  or  ought  to  do,  in  the 
life  of  the  world  and  among  his  fellows,  of  the  institution 
in  which  this  attitude  of  mind  is  cherished  and  of  the  sum 
total  of  human  institutions  and  relations  of  which  the  saved 
life  should  be  the  inward  force.  There  is  room  even  for 
a  clause  in  which  to  compress  the  little  that  we  know  of  any- 
thing beyond  this  life.  We  have  written  in  unconventional 
words.  There  is  no  one  place,  either  in  Ritschl's  work 
or  elsewhere,  where  this  grand  and  simple  scheme  stands 
together  in  one  context.     This   is   unfortunate.     Were  this 


in.]  THEOLOGICAL  RECONSTRUCTION  97 

the  case,  even  wayfaring  men  might  have  understood  some- 
what better  than  they  have  what  Ritschl  was  aiming  at. 

It  is  a  still  greater  pity  that  the  execution  of  the  scheme 
should  have  left  so  much  to  be  desired.  That  this  execution 
would  prove  difficult  needs  hardly  to  be  said.  That  it  could 
never  be  the  work  of  one  man  is  certainly  true.  To  have  had 
so  great  an  insight  is  title  enough  to  fame.  Ritschl  falls  off 
from  his  endeavour  as  often  as  did  Schleiermacher — more  often 
and  with  less  excuse.  The  might  of  the  past  is  great.  The 
lumber  which  he  meekly  carries  along  with  him  is  surprising, 
as  one  feels  his  lack  of  meekness  in  the  handling  of  the  lumber 
which  he  recognised  as  such.  The  putting  of  new  wine  into 
old  bottles  is  so  often  reprobated  by  Ritschl  that  the  reader 
is  justly  surprised  when  he  nevertheless  recognises  the  bottles. 
The  system  is  not  '  all  of  one  piece  ' — distinctly  not.  There 
are  places  where  the  rent  is  certainly  made  worse  by  the  old 
cloth  on  the  new  garment.  The  work  taken  as  a  whole  is 
so  bewildering  that  one  finds  himself  asking, '  What  is  Ritschl's 
method  ?  '  If  what  is  meant  is  not  a  question  of  detail,  but 
of  the  total  apprehension  of  the  problem  to  be  solved,  the 
apprehension  which  we  strove  to  outline  above,  then  Ritschl's 
courageous  and  complete  inversion  of  the  ancient  method, 
his  demand  that  we  proceed  from  the  known  to  the  unknown, 
is  a  contribution  so  great  that  all  shortcomings  in  the  execu- 
tion of  it  are  insignificant.  His  first  volume  deals  with  the 
history  of  the  doctrine  of  justification,  beginning  with  Anselm 
and  Abelard.  In  it  Ritschl's  eminent  qualities  as  historian 
come  out.  In  it  also  his  prejudices  have  their  play.  The 
second  volume  deals  with  the  Biblical  foundations  for  the 
doctrine.  Ritschl  was  bred  in  the  Tubingen  school.  Yet 
here  is  much  forced  exegesis.  Ritschl's  positivistic  view  of 
the  Scripture  and  of  the  whole  question  of  revelation,  was 
not  congruous  with  his  well-learned  biblical  criticism.  The 
third  volume  is  the  constructive  one.  It  is  of  immeasur- 
ably greater  value  than  the  other  two.  It  is  this  third 
volume  which  has  frequently  })cen  translated. 

In  respect  of  his  contention  against  metaphysics  it  is  hardly  j 
necessary  that  we  should  go  into  detail.     With  his  empirical  ' 

Q 


98      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

and  psychological  point  of  departure,  given  above,  most  men 
will  find  themselves  in  entire  sympathy.  The  confusion  of 
religion,  which  is  an  experience,  with  dogma  which  is  reasoning  \ 
about  it,  and  the  acceptance  of  statements  in  Scripture  which  I 
are  metaphysical  in  nature,  as  if  they  were  religious  truths — 
these  two  things  have,  in  time  past,  prevented  many  earnest 
thinkers  from  following  the  true  road.  When  it  comes  to 
the  constructive  portion  of  his  work,  it  is,  of  course,  impossible 
for  Ritschl  to  build  without  the  theoretical  supports  which 
philosophy  gives,  or  to  follow  up  certain  of  the  characteristic 
magnitudes  of  religion  without  following  them  into  the  realm 
of  metaphysics,  to  which,  quite  as  truly  as  to  that  of  religion, 
they  belong.  It  would  be  unjust  to  Ritschl  to  suppose  that 
these  facts  were  hidden  from  him. 

As  to  his  attitude  toward  mysticism,  there  is  a  word  to  say. 
In  the  long  history  of  religious  thought  those  who  have  re- 
volted against  metaphysical  interpretation,  orthodox  or  un- 
orthodox, have  usually  taken  refuge  in  mysticism.     Hither  i 
the  prophet  Augustine  takes  refuge  when  he  would  flee  the 
ecclesiastic  Augustine,  himself.     The  Brethren  of  the  Free  ! 
Spirit,  Tauler,  a  Kempis,  Suso,  the  author  of  the  Theologia , 
Germanica,  Molinos,  Madame    Guyon,  illustrate    the    thing 
we  mean.     Ritschl  had  seen  much  of  mysticism  in  pietist 
circles.     He  knew  the  history  of  the  movement  well.     WTiat 
impressed  his  sane  mind  was  the  fact  that  unhealthy  minds 
have  often  claimed,  as  their  revelation  from  God,  an  experience  \ 
which  might,  with  more  truth,  be  assigned  to  almost  any  other 
source.     He  desired  to  cut  off  the  possibility  of  what  seemed 
to  him  often  a  tragic  delusion.     The  margin  of  any  mystical 
movement  stretches  out  toward  monstrosities  and  absurdities. 
For  that  matter,  what  prevents  a  Buddhist  from  declaring 
his    thoughts    and    feelings    to    be    Christianity  ?     Indeed, 
Ritschl  asks,  why  is  not  Buddhism  as  good  as  such  Chris- 
tianity ?     He  is,  therefore,  suspicious  of  revelations  which  1 
have  nothing  by  which  they  can  be  measured  and  checked. 
The  claim  of  mystics  that  they  come,  in  communion  with) 
God,  to  the  point  where  they  have  no  need  of  Christ,  seemed/ 
to  him  impious.     There  is  no  way  of  knowing  that  we  are  in 


in.]  THEOLOGICAL  RECONSTRUCTION  99 

fellowship  with  God,  except  by  comparing  what  we  feel  that 
this  fellowship  has  given  us,  with  that  which  we  historically 
learn  that  the  fellowship  with  God  gave  to  Christ.  This  is  the 
sense  and  this  the  connexion  in  which  Ritschl  says  that  we 
cannot  come  to  God  save  in  and  through  the  historic  Christ 
as  he  is  given  us  in  the  Gospels.  The  inner  life,  at  least, 
which  is  there  depicted  for  us  is,  in  this  outward  and  authori- 
tative sense,  our  norm  and  guide. 

Large  difficulties  loom  upon  the  horizon  of  this  positivistic 
insistence  upon  histoiy.  Can  we  know  the  inner  life  of  Christ 
well  enough  to  use  it  thus  as  test  in  every,  or  even  in  any 
case  ?  Does  not  the  use  of  such  a  test,  or  of  any  test  in  this 
external  way,  take  us  out  of  the  realm  of  the  religion  of  the 
spirit  ?  Men  once  said  that  the  Church  was  their  guide. 
Others  said  the  Scripture  was  their  guide.  Now,  in  the  sense 
of  the  outwardness  of  its  authority,  we  repudiate  even  this. 
It  rings  devoutly  if  we  say  Christ  is  our  guide.  Yet,  as 
Ritschl  describes  this  guidance,  in  the  exigency  of  his  conten- 
tion against  mysticism,  have  we  anything  different  ?  What 
becomes  of  Confucianists  and  Shintoists,  who  have  never 
heard  of  the  historic  Christ  ?  And  all  the  while  we  have  the 
sense  of  a  query  in  our  minds.  Is  it  open  to  any  man  to  re- 
pudiate mysticism  absolutely  and  with  contumely,  and  then 
leave  us  to  discover  that  he  does  not  mean  mysticism  as 
historians  of  every  faith  have  understood  it,  but  only  the 
margin  of  evil  which  is  apparently  inseparable  from  it  ?  That 
margin  of  evil  others  see  and  deplore.  Against  it  other 
remedies  have  been  suggested,  as,  for  example,  intelligence. 
Some  would  feel  that  in  Ritschl's  remedy  the  loss  is  greater 
than  the  gain. 

This  historical  character  of  revelation  is  so  truly  one  of  the 
fountain  heads  of  the  theology  which  takes  its  rise  in  Ritschl^ 
that  it  deserves  to  be  considered  somewhat  more  at  length.^ 
The  Ritschlian  movement  has  engaged  a  generation  of  more 
or  less  notable  thinkers  in  the  period  since  Ritschl's  death. 
These  have  dissented  at  many  points  from  Ritschl's  views, 
diverged  from  his  path  and  marked  out  courses  of  their  own. 
We  shall  do  well  in  the  remainder  of  this  chapter  to  attempt 


100     HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT  [CH. 

the  delineation  in  terms,  not  exclusively  of  Ritschl,  but  of  that 
which  may  with  some  laxity  be  styled  Ritschlianism.  The 
value  judgments  of  religion  indicate  only  the  subjective  form 
of  religious  knowledge,  as  the  Ritschlians  understand  it. 
Faith,  however,  does  not  invent  its  own  contents.  Historical 
facts,  composing  the  revelation,  actually  exist,  quite  inde- 
pendent of  the  use  which  the  believer  makes  of  them.  No 
group  of  thinkers  have  more  truly  sought  to  draw  near  to  the 
person  of  the  historic  Jesus.  The  historical  person,  Jesus  | 
of  Nazareth,  is  the  divine  revelation.  That  sums  up  this  1 
aspect  of  the  Ritschlian  position.  Some  negative  conse- 
quences of  this  position  we  have  already  noted.  Let  us  turn 
to  its  positive  significance. 

Herrmann  is  the  one  bf  the  Ritschlians  who  has  dealt  with 
this  matter  not  only  with  great  clearness,  but  also  with  deep 
Christian  feeling  in  his  Verkehr  des  Christen  mit  Gott,  1886, 
and  notably  in  his  address,  Der  Begriff  der  Offenbarung,  1887. 
If  the  motive  of  religion  were  an  intellectual  curiosity,  a 
verbal  communication  would  suffice.     As  it  is  a  practical 
necessity,  this  must  be  met  by  actual  impulse  in  life.     That 
passing  out  of  the  unhappiness  of  sin,  into  the  peace  and  larger^ 
life  which   is   salvation,  does    indeed  imply  the  movement 
of  God's  spirit  on  our  hearts,  in  conversion  and  thereafter. 
This  is  essentially  mediated  to  us  through  the  Scriptures, 
especially   through    those   of  the  New  Testament,   because  , 
the  New  Testament  contains  the  record  of  the  personality  ^ 
of  Jesus.     In  that  our  personality  is  filled  with  the  spirit  ' 
which  breathes  in  him,  our  salvation  is  achieved.     The  image , 
of  Jesus  which  we  receive  acts  upon  us  as  something  in-| 
dubitably  real.     It  vindicates  itself  as  real,  in  that  it  takes 
hold  upon  our  manhood.     Of  course,  this  assumes  that  the 
Church  has  been  right  in  accepting  the  Gospels  as  historical.  ' 
Herrmann  candidly  faces  this  question.     Not  every  word  or 
deed,  he  says,  which  is  recorded  concerning  Jesus,  belongs 
to  this  central  and  dynamic  revelation  of  which  we  speak. 
We  do  not  help  men  to  see  Jesus  in  a  saving  way  if,  on  the 
strength  of  accounts  in  the  New  Testament,  we  insist  con-  i 
ceming  Jesus  that  he  was  born  of  a  virgin,  that  he  raised  the  I 


m.]  THEOLOGICAL  RECONSTRUCTION  101 

dead,  that  he  himself  rose  from  the  dead.     We  should  not 
put  these  things  before  men  with  the  declaration  that  they 
must  assent  to  them.     We  must  not  try  to  persuade  ourselves 
that  that  which  acted  upon  the  disciples  as  indubitably  real 
must  of  necessity  act  similarly  upon  us.     We  are  to  allow 
ourselves  to  be  seized  and  uplifted  by  that  which,  in  our 
position,  touches  us  as  indubitably  real.     This  is,  in  the  first  j  j 
place,  the  moral  character  of  Jesus.     It  is  his  inner  life  which,  I 
on  the  testimony  of  the  disciples,  meets  us  as  something  real  ' 
and  active  in  the  world,  as  truly  now  as  then.     What  are  some 
facts  of  this  inner  life  ?     The  Jesus  of  the  New  Testament 
shows  a  firmness  of  religious  conviction,  a  clearness  of  moral  i 
judgment,  a  purity  and  force  of  will,  such  as  are  not  found  ( 
united  in  any  other  figure  in  history.     We  have  the  image   , 
of  a  man  who  is  conscious  that  he  does  not  fall  short  of  the  ' 
ideal  for  which  he  offers  himself.     It  is  this  consciousness 
which  is  yet  united  in  him  with  the  most  perfect  humility.  / 
He  lives  out  his  life  and  faces  death  in  a  confidence  and  in- 
dependence  which   have   never   been   approached.     He   has  j 
confidence  that  he  can  lift  men  to  such  a  height  that  theyj 
also  will   partake   with  him   in   the   highest  good,  through! 
their  full  surrender  to  God  and  their  life  of  love  for  their 
fellows. 

It  is  clear  that  Herrmann  aims  to  bring  to  the  front 
only  those  elements  in  the  life  of  Jesus  which  are  likely  to 
prove  most  effectual  in  meeting  the  need  and  winning  the 
faith  of  the  men  of  our  age.  He  would  cast  into  the  back- 
ground those  elements  which  are  likely  to  awaken  doubt  I 
and  to  hinder  the  approach  of  men's  souls  to  God.  For 
Herrmann  himself  the  virgin  birth  has  the  significance  that 
the  spiritual  life  of  Jesus  did  not  proceed  from  the  sinful  race.  ) 
But  Herrmann  admits  that  a  man  could  hold  even  that 
without  needing  to  allege  that  the  physical  life  of  Jesus  did 
not  come  into  being  in  the  ordinary  way.  The  distinction 
between  the  inner  and  outward  life  of  Jesus,  and  the  declara- 
tion that  belief  in  the  former  alone  is  necessary,  has  the 
result  of  thus  ridding  us  of  questions  which  can  scarcely 
fail  to  be  present  to  the  mind  of  every  modem  man.     Yet 


102    HISTORY  OF  CHPI^TIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

it  would  be  unjust  to  imply  that  this  is  the  purpose.  Quite 
the  contrary,  the  distinction  is  logical  for  this  theology. 
Redemption  is  an  affair  of  the  inner  life  of  a  man.  It  is  the 
force  of  the  inner  life  of  the  Redeemer  which  avails  for  it. 
It  is  from  the  belief  that  such  an  inner  and  spiritual  life  was 
once  realised  here  on  earth,  that  our  own  faith  gathers  strength 
and  gets  guidance  in  the  conflict  for  the  salvation  of  our 
souls.  The  belief  in  the  historicity  of  such  an  inner  life  is 
necessary.  So  Harnack  also  declares  in  his  Wesen  des  Christen- 
thums,  1900.  It  is  noteworthy  that  in  this  connexion  neither 
of  these  writers  advances  to  a  form  of  speculation  concerning 
the  exalted  Christ,  which  in  recent  years  has  had  some  currency. 
According  to  this  doctrine,  there  is  ascribed  to  the  risen  and 
ascended  Jesus  an  existence  with  God  which  is  thought  of 
in  terms  different  from  those  which  we  associate  with  the 
idea  of  immortality.  In  other  words,  this  continued  existence 
of  Christ  as  God  is  a  counterpart  of  that  existence  before 
the  incarnation,  which  the  doctrine  of  the  pre-existence 
alleged.  But  surely  this  speculation  can  have  no  better  stand- 
ing than  that  of  the  pre-existence. 

Sin  in  the  language  of  religion  is  defection  from  the  law 
of  God.  It  is  the  transgression  of  the  divine  command.] 
In  what  measure,  therefore,  the  life  of  man  can  be  thought 
of  as  sinful,  depends  upon  his  knowledge  of  the  will  of  God. 
In  Scripture,  as  in  the  legends  of  the  early  historj^  of  the 
race,  this  knowledge  stands  in  intimate  connexion  with  the 
witness  to  a  primitive  revelation.  This  thought  has  had  a 
curious  history.  The  ideas  of  mankind  concerning  God  and 
his  will  have  grown  and  changed  as  much  as  have  any  other 
ideas.  The  rudimentary  idea  of  the  good  is  probably  of  social 
origin.  It  first  emerges  in  the  contact  of  men  one  with 
another.  As  the  personalised  ideal  of  conduct,  the  god  then 
reacts  upon  conduct,  as  the  conduct  reacts  upon  the  notion  of 
the  god.  Only  slowly  has  the  ideal  of  the  good  been  clarified. 
Only  slowly  have  the  gods  been  ethicised.  '  An  honest  God 
is  the  noblest  work  of  man.'  The  moralising  and  spiritualising 
of  the  idea  of  Jahve  lies  right  upon  the  face  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment.    The  ascent  of  man  on  his  ethical  and  spiritual  side 


in.]  THEOLOGICAL  RECONSTRUCTION  103 

is  as  certain  as  is  that  on  his  physical  side.  Long  struggle 
upward  through  ignorance,  weakness,  sin,  gradual  elevating 
of  the  standard  of  what  ought  to  be,  growingly  successful 
effort  to  conform  to  that  standard — this  is  what  the  history 
of  the  race  has  seen. 

Athwart  this  lies  the  traditional  dogma.  The  dogma  took 
up  into  itself  a  legend  of  the  childhood  of  the  world.  It 
elaborated  that  which  in  Genesis  is  vague  and  poetic  into  a 
vast  scheme  which  has  passed  as  a  sacred  philosophy  of 
history.  It  postulated  an  original  revelation.  It  affirmed  the 
created  state  of  man  as  one  of  holiness  before  a  fall.  To  the 
framers  of  the  dogma,  if  sin  is  the  transgression  of  God's  will, 
then  it  must  be  in  light  of  a  revelation  of  that  will.  In  the 
Scriptures  we  have  vague  intimations  concerning  God's  will, 
growingly  clearer  knowledge  of  that  will,  evolving  through 
history  to  Jesus.  In  the  dogma  we  have  this  grand  assump- 
tion of  a  paradisaic  state  of  perfectness  in  w^hich  the  will  of 
God  was  from  the  beginning  perfectly  kno\vn. 

In  the  Platonic,  as  in  the  rabbinic,  speculation  the  idea 
must  precede  the  fact.  Every  step  of  progress  is  a  defection 
from  that  idea.  The  dogma  suffers  from  an  insoluble  contra- 
diction wdthin  itself.  It  aims  to  give  us  the  point  of  departure 
by  which  we  are  to  recognise  the  nature  of  sin.  At  the  same 
moment  it  would  describe  the  perfection  of  man  at  which 
God  has  willed  that  by  age-long  struggle  he  should  arrive. 
Now,  if  we  place  this  perfection  at  the  beginning  of  human 
history,  before  all  human  self-determination,  we  divest 
it  of  ethical  quality.  Whatever  else  it  may  be,  it  is  not 
character.  On  the  other  hand,  if  we  would  make  this  per- 
fection really  that  of  moral  character,  then  we  cannot  place 
it  at  the  beginning  of  human  history,  but  far  dowTi  the  course 
of  the  evolution  of  the  higher  human  traits,  of  the  conscious- 
ness of  sin  and  of  the  struggle  for  redemption.  It  is  not  re- 
velation from  God,  but  naive  imagination,  later  giving  place 
to  adventurous  speculation  concerning  the  origin  of  the 
universe,  which  we  have  in  the  doctrine  of  the  primaeval 
perfection  of  man.  We  do  not  really  make  earnest  with  our 
Christian  claim  that  in  Jesus  we  have  our  paramount  rove- 


104    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

lation,  until  we  admit  this.     It  is  through  Jesus,  and  not 
from  Adam  that  we  know  sin. 

So  we  might  go  on  to  say  that  the  dogma  of  inherited  guilt 
is  a  contradiction  in  terms.  Disadvantage  may  be  inherited, 
i  weakness,  proclivity  to  sin,  but  not  guilt,  not  sin  in  the  sense 
of  that  which  entails  guilt.  What  entails  guilt  is  action 
counter  to  the  will  of  God  which  we  know.  That  is  always  the 
act  of  the  individual  man  myself.  It  cannot  by  any  possi- 
bility be  the  act  of  another.  It  may  be  the  consequence  of 
the  sins  of  my  ancestors  that  I  do  moral  evil  without  knowing 
it  to  be  such.  Even  my  fellows  view  this  as  a  mitigation,  if 
not  as  an  exculpation.  The  very  same  act,  however,  which 
up  to  this  point  has  been  only  an  occasion  for  pity,  becomes 
sin  and  entails  guilt,  when  it  passes  through  my  own  mind 
and  will  as  a  defection  from  a  will  of  God  in  which  I  believe, 
and  as  a  righteousness  which  I  refuse.  The  confusion  of  guilt 
and  sin  in  order  to  the  inclusion  of  all  under  the  need  of  sal- 
vation, as  in  the  Augustinian  scheme,  ended  in  bewilderment 
and  stultification  of  the  moral  sense.  It  caused  men  to 
despair  of  themselves  and  gravely  to  misrepresent  God.  It 
is  no  wonder  if  in  the  age  of  rationalism  this  dogma  was 
largely  done  away  with.  The  religious  sense  of  sin  was 
declared  to  be  an  hallucination.  Nothing  is  more  evident 
in  the  rationalist  theology  than  its  lack  of  the  sense  of  sin. 
This  alone  is  sufficient  explanation  of  the  impotency  and 
inadequacy  of  that  theology.  Kant's  doctrine  of  radical 
evil  testifies  to  his  deep  sense  that  the  rationalists  were 
wrong.  He  could  see  also  the  impossibility  of  the  ancient 
view.  But  he  had  no  substitute.  Hegel,  much  as  he  prided 
himself  upon  the  restoration  of  dogma,  viewed  evil  as  only 
relative,  good  in  the  making.  Schleiermacher  made  a  begin- 
ning of  construing  the  thought  of  sin  from  the  point  of  view 
of  the  Christian  consciousness.  Ritschl  was  the  first  con- 
sistently to  carry  out  Schleiermacher's  idea,  placing  the 
Christian  consciousness  in  the  centre  and  claiming  that  the 
revelation  of  the  righteousness  of  God  and  of  the  perfection 
of  man  is  in  Jesus.  All  men  being  sinners,  there  is  a  vast 
solidarity,  which  he  describes  as  the  Kingdom  of  Evil  and 


m.]  THEOLOGICAL  RECONSTRUCTION  105 

sets  over  against  the  Kingdom  of  God,  yet  not  so  that  the 
freedom  or  responsibiUty  of  man  is  impaired.  God  forgives 
all  sin  save  that  of  wilful  resistance  to  the  spirit  of  the 
good.  That  is,  Ritschl  regards  all  sin,  short  of  this  last, 
as  mainly  ignorance  and  weakness.  It  is  from  Ritschl,  and 
more  particularly  from  Kaftan,  that  the  phrases  have  been 
mainly  taken  which  served  as  introduction  to  this  paragraph. 
For  the  work  of  God  through  Christ,  in  the  salvation  of 
men  from  the  guilt  and  power  of  sin,  various  terms  have  been 
used.  Different  aspects  of  the  work  have  been  described 
by  different  names.  Redemption,  regeneration,  justification, 
reconciliation  and  election  or  predestination — these  are  the 
familiar  words.  This  is  the  order  in  which  the  conceptions 
stand,  if  we  take  them  as  they  occur  in  consciousness.  Election 
then  means  nothing  more  than  the  ultimate  reference  to  God 
of  the  mystery  of  an  experience  in  which  the  believer  already 
rejoices.  On  the  other  hand,  in  the  dogma  the  order  is  re- 
versed. Election  must  come  first,  since  it  is  the  decree  of 
God  upon  which  all  depends.  Redemption  and  reconciliation 
have,  in  Christian  doctrine,  been  traditionally  regarded  as 
completed  transactions,  waiting  indeed  to  be  applied  to  the 
individual  or  appropriated  by  him  through  faith,  but  of  them- 
selves without  relation  to  faith.  Reconciliation  was  long 
thought  of  as  that  of  an  angry  God  to  man.  Especially  was 
this  last  the  characteristic  view  of  the  West,  where  juristic 
notions  prevailed.  Origen  talked  of  a  right  of  the  devil  over 
the  soul  of  man  until  bought  off  by  the  sacrifice  of  Christ. 
This  is  pure  paganism,  of  course.  The  doctrine  of  Anselm 
marks  a  great  advance.  It  runs  somewhat  thus  :  The  divine 
honour  is  offended  in  the  sin  of  man.  Satisfaction  corre- 
sponding to  the  greatness  of  the  guilt  must  be  rendered. 
Man  is  under  obligation  to  render  this  satisfaction  ;  yet  he 
is  unable  so  to  do.  A  sin  against  God  is  an  infinite  offence. 
It  demands  an  infinite  satisfaction.  Man  can  render  no 
satisfaction  which  is  not  finite.  The  way  out  of  this  dilemma 
is  the  incarnation  of  the  divine  Logos.  For  the  god-man,  as 
man,  is  entitled  to  bring  this  satisfaction  for  men.  On  the 
other  hand,  as  God  he  is  able  so  to  do.     In  his  death  this 


106    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

satisfaction  is  embodied.  He  gave  his  life  freely.  God 
having  received  satisfaction  through  him  demands  nothing 
more  from  us. 

Abelard  had,  almost  at  the  same  time  with  Anselm,  inter- 
preted the  death  of  Christ  in  far  different  fashion.  It  was  a 
revelation  of  the  love  of  God  which  wins  men  to  love  in  turn. 
This  notion  of  Abelard  was  far  too  subtle.  The  crass  ob- 
jective dogma  of  Anselm  prevailed.  The  death  of  Christ  was 
a  sacrifice.  The  purpose  was  the  propitiation  of  an  angry 
God.  The  effect  was  that,  on  the  side  of  God,  a  hindrance 
to  man's  salvation  was  removed.  The  doctrine  accurately 
reflects  the  feudal  ideas  of  the  time  which  produced  it.  In 
Grotius  was  done  away  the  notion  of  private  right,  which  lies 
at  the  basis  of  the  theory  of  Anselm.  That  of  public  duty 
took  its  place.  A  sovereign  need  not  stand  upon  his  offended 
honour,  as  in  Anselm's  thought.  Still,  he  cannot,  like  a 
private  citizen,  freely  forgive.  He  must  maintain  the  dignity 
of  his  office,  in  order  not  to  demoralise  the  world.  The 
sufferings  of  Christ  did  not  effect  a  necessary  private  satis- 
faction. They  were  an  example  which  satisfied  the  moral 
order  of  the  world.  Apart  from  this  change,  the  conception 
remains  the  same. 

As  Kaftan  argues,  we  can  escape  the  dreadful  externality 
and  artificiality  of  this  scheme,  only  as  redemption  and  regene- 
ration are  brought  back  to  their  primary  place  in  conscious- 
ness. These  are  the  initial  experiences  in  which  we  become 
aware  of  God's  work  through  Christ  in  us  and  for  us.  The 
reconciliation  is  of  us.  The  redemption  is  from  our  sins.  The 
regeneration  is  to  a  new  moral  life.  Through  the  influence 
of  Jesus,  reconciled  on  our  part  to  God  and  believing  in  His 
unchanging  love  to  us,  we  are  translated  into  God's  kingdom 
and  live  for  the  eternal  in  our  present  existence.  Redemption 
is  indeed  the  work  of  God  through  Christ,  but  it  has  intelligible 
parallel  in  the  awakening  of  the  life  of  the  mind,  or  again  of 
the  spirit  of  self-sacrifice,  through  the  personal  influence  of 
the  wise  and  good.  Salvation  begins  in  such  an  awakening 
through  the  personal  influence  of  the  wisest  and  best.  It 
is  transformation  of  our  personality  through  the  personality 


m.]  THEOLOGICAL  RECONSTRUCTION  107 

of  Jesus,  by  the  personal  God  of  truth,  of  goodness  and  of 
love.  All  that  which  God  through  Jesus  has  done  for  us  is 
futile,  save  as  we  make  the  actuahsation  of  our  deliverance 
from  sin  our  continuous  and  unceasing  task.  When  this 
connexion  of  thought  is  broken  through,  we  transfer  the 
whole  matter  of  salvation  from  the  inner  to  the  outer  world 
and  make  of  it  a  transaction  independent  of  the  moral  life 
of  man. 

Justification  and  reconciliation  also  are  primarily  acts  and 
gifts  of  God.  Justification  is  a  forensic  act.  The  sense  is  not 
that  in  justification  we  are  made  just.  We  are,  so  to  say, 
temporarily  thus  regarded,  not  that  leniency  may  become 
the  occasion  of  a  new  offence,  but  that  in  grateful  love  we 
may  make  it  the  starting  point  of  a  new  life.  We  must  justify 
our  justification.  It  is  easy  to  see  the  objections  to  such  a 
course  on  the  part  of  a  civil  judge.  He  must  consider  the 
rights  of  others.  It  was  this  which  brought  Grotius  and  the 
rest,  with  the  New  England  theologians  down  to  Park,  to  feel 
that  forgiveness  could  not  be  quite  free.  If  we  acknowledge 
that  this  symbolism  of  God  as  judge  or  sovereign  is  all 
symbolism,  mere  figure  of  speech,  not  fact  at  all,  then  that 
objection — and  much  else — falls  away.  If  we  assert  that^ 
another  figure  of  speech,  that  of  God  as  Father,  more  per- 
fectly suggests  the  relation  of  God  and  man,  then  forgiveness 
may  be  free.  Then  justification  and  forgiveness  are  only> 
two  words  for  one  and  the  same  idea.  Then  the  nightmare 
of  a  God  who  would  forgive  and  cannot,  of  a  God  who 
will  forgive  but  may  not  justify  until  something  further 
happens,  is  all  done  away.  Then  the  relation  of  the  death 
of  Jesus  to  the  forgiveness  of  our  sins  cannot  be  other  than  the 
relation  of  his  life  to  that  forgiveness.  Both  the  one  and 
the  other  are  a  revelation  of  the  forgiving  love  of  God.  We 
may  say  that  in  his  death  the  whole  meaning  of  his  life  was 
gathered.  We  may  say  that  his  death  was  the  consum- 
mation of  his  life,  that  without  it  his  life  would  not  have 
been  what  it  is.  This  is,  however,  very  far  from  being  the 
ordinary  statement  of  the  relation  of  Jesus'  death,  either  to 
his  own  life  or  to  the  forgiveness  of  our  sins. 


108    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

The  doctrinal  tradition  made  much  also  of  the  deliverance 
from  punishment  which  follows  after  the  forgiveness  of  sin. 
In  fact,  in  many  forms  of  the  dogma,  it  has  been  the  escape 
from  punishment  which  was  chiefly  had  in  mind.  Along 
with  the  forensic  notion  of  salvation  we  largely  or  wholly 
discard  the  notion  of  punishment.  We  retain  only  the  sense 
that  the  consequence  of  continuing  in  sin  is  to  become  more 
sinful.  God  himself  is  powerless  to  prevent  that.  Punish- 
ment is  immanent,  vital,  necessary.  The  penalty  is  gradually 
taken  away  if  the  sin  itself  is  taken  away — not  otherwise. 
It  returns  with  the  sin,  it  continues  in  the  sin,  it  is  insepar- 
able from  the  sin.  Punishment  is  no  longer  the  right  word. 
Reward  is  not  the  true  description  of  that  growing  better  which 
is  the  consequence  of  being  good.  Reward  or  punishment  as 
quid  pro  quo,  as  arbitrary  assignments,  as  external  equiva- 
lents, do  not  so  much  as  belong  to  the  world  of  ideas  in  which 
we  move.  For  this  view  the  idea  that  God  laid  upon  Jesus 
penalties  due  to  us,  fades  into  thin  air.  Jesus  could  by  no 
possibility  have  met  the  punishment  of  sin,  except  he  him- 
self had  been  a  sinner.  Then  he  must  have  met  the  punish- 
ment of  his  own  sin  and  not  that  of  others.  That  portion 
which  one  may  gladly  bear  of  the  consequences  of  another's 
sin  may  rightfully  be  called  by  almost  any  other  name.  It 
cannot  be  called  punishment  since  punishment  is  immanent. 
Even  eternal  death  is  not  a  judicial  assignment  for  our  ob- 
stinate sinfulness.  Eternal  death  is  the  obstinate  sinfulness, 
and  the  sinfulness  the  death. 

It  must  be  evident  that  reconciliation  can  have,  in  this 
scheme,  no  meaning  save  that  of  man's  being  reconciled  to 
God.     Jesus  reveals  a  God  who  has  no  need  to  be  reconciled  j 
to  us.     The  alienation  is  not  on  the  side  of  God.     That,  being  ! 
alienated  from  God,  man  may  imagine  that  God  is  hostile  to 
him,  is  only  the  working  of  a  familiar  law  of  the  human 
mind.     The  fiction  of  an  angry  God  is  the  most  awful  survival\ 
among  us  of  primitive  paganism.     That  which  Jesus  by  his  \ 
revelation  of  God  brought  to  pass  was  a  true  *  at-one-ment,'  [ 
a  causing  of  God  and  man  to  be  at  one  again.     To  the  wordj 
atonement,  as  currently  pronounced,  and   as,  until  a  half 


m.]  THEOLOGICAL  RECONSTRUCTION  109 

century  ago,  almost  universally  apprehended,  the  notion  of 
that  which  is  sacrificial  attached.     To  the  life  and  death  of)/ 
Jesus,  as  revelation  of  God  and  Saviour  of  men,  we  can  no| 
longer  attach  any  sacrificial  meaning  whatsoever.     There  is' 
indeed  the  perfectly  general  sense  in  which  so  beautiful  a 
life  and  so  heroic  a  death  were,  of  course,  a  grand  exempli-i 
fication  of  self-sacrifice.     Yet  this  is  a  sense  so  different  from 
the  other  and  in  itself  so  obvious,  that  one  hesitates  to  use 
the  same  word  in  the  immediate  context  with  that  other,  lest 
it  should  appear  that  the  intention  was  to  obscure  rather 
than  to  make  clear  the  meaning.     For  atonement  in  a  sense^ 
different  from  that  of  reconciUation,  we  have  no  significance  / 
whatever.     Reconciliation  and  atonement  describe  one  and 
the  same  fact.     In  the  dogma  the  words  were  as  far  as  possible 
from  being  synonyms.     They  referred  to  two  facts,  the  one 
of  which  was  the  means  and  essential  prerequisite  of  the  other. 
The  vicarious  sacrifice  was  the  antecedent  condition  of  the 
reconciling  of  God.     In  our  thought  it  is  not  a  reconciliation 
of  God  which  is  aimed  at.     No  sacrifice  is  necessary.     No  \ 
sacrifice  such  as  that  postulated  is  possible.     Of  the  recon- 
ciliation of  man  to  God  the  only  condition  is  the  revelation 
of  the  love  of  God  in  the  life  and  death  of  Jesus  and  the 
obedient  acceptance  of  that  revelation  on  the  part  of  men. 


no    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  IvANT    [ch. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE   CRITICAL   AND   HISTORICAL   MOVEMENT 

It  has  been  said  that  in  Christian  times  the  relation  of  philo- 
sophy and  religion  may  be  determined  by  the  attitude  of 
reason  toward  a  single  matter,  namely,  the  churchly  doctrine 
of  revelation.!  There  are  three  possible  relations  of  reason 
to  this  doctrine.  First,  it  may  be  affirmed  that  the  content 
of  religion  and  theology  is  matter  communicated  to  man  in 
extraordinary  fashion,  truth  otherwise  unattainable,  on  which 
it  is  beyond  the  competence  of  reason  to  sit  in  judgment.  We 
have  then  the  two  spheres  arbitrarily  separated.  As  regards 
their  relation,  theology  is  at  first  supreme.  Reason  is  the 
handmaiden  of  faith.  It  is  occupied  in  applying  the  prin- 
ciples which  it  receives  at  the  hands  of  theology.  These  are 
the  so-called  Ages  of  Faith.  Notably  was  this  the  attitude 
of  the  Middle  Age.  But  in  the  long  run  either  authoritative 
revelation,  thus  conceived,  must  extinguish  reason  altogether, 
or  else  reason  must  claim  the  whole  man.  After  all,  it  is  in 
virtue  of  his  having  some  reason  that  man  is  the  subject  of 
revelation.  He  is  continually  asked  to  exercise  his  reason 
upon  certain  parts  of  the  revelation,  even  by  those  who  main- 
tain that  he  must  do  so  only  within  limits.  It  is  only  because 
there  is  a  certain  reasonableness  in  the  conceptions  of  revealed 
religion  that  man  has  ever  been  able  to  make  them  his  own 
or  to  find  in  them  meaning  and  edification.  This  external 
relation  of  reason  to  revelation  cannot  continue.  Nor  can 
the  encroachments  of  reason  be  met  by  temporary  distinctions 
such  as  that  between  the  natural  and  the  supernatural.  The 
antithesis  to  the  natural  is  not  the  supernatural,  but  the 
unnatural.  The  antithesis  to  reason  is  not  faith,  but  irra- 
1  Seth  Pringle-Pattison,  The  Philosophical  Ra^Jicals,  p.  216. 


IV.]        THE  CRITICAL  AND  HISTORICAL  MOVEMENT        111 

tionality.     The  antithesis  to  human  truth  is  not  the  divine 
truth.     It  is  falsehood. 

When  men  have  made  this  discovery,  a  revulsion  carries 
their  minds  to  the  second  position  of  which  we  spoke.  This 
is,  namely,  the  position  of  extreme  denial.  It  is  an  attitude 
of  negation  toward  revelation,  such  as  prevailed  in  the  barren! 
and  trivial  rationalism  of  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  centurJ^| 
The  reason  having  been  long  repressed  revenges  itself,  usurp- 
ing everything.  The  explanation  of  the  rise  of  positive  re- 
ligion and  of  the  claim  of  revelation  is  sought  in  the  hypothesis 
of  deceit,  of  ambitious  priestcraft  and  incurable  credulity. 
The  religion  of  those  who  thus  argue,  in  so  far  as  they  claim  any 
religion,  is  merely  the  current  morality.  Their  explanation  of 
the  religion  of  others  is  that  it  is  merely  the  current  morality 
plus  certain  unprovable  assumptions.  Indeed,  they  may 
think  it  to  be  but  the  obstinate  adherence  to  these  assump- 
tions minus  the  current  morality.  It  is  impossible  that  tins 
shallow  view  should  prevail.  To  overcome  it,  however,  there 
is  need  of  a  philosophy  which  shall  give  not  less,  but  greater 
scope  to  reason  and  at  the  same  time  an  inward  meaning  to 
revelation. 

This  brings  us  to  the  third  possible  position,  to  which  the 
best  thinkers  of  the  nineteenth  century  have  advanced.  So 
long  as  deistic  views  of  the  relation  of  God  to  man  and  the 
world  held  the  field,  revelation  meant  something  interjected 
ah  extra  into  the  established  order  of  things.  The  popular 
theology  which  so  abhorred  deism  was  yet  essentially 
deistic  in  its  notion  of  God  and  of  his  separation  from  the 
world.  Men  did  not  perceive  that  by  thus  separating  God 
from  the  world  they  set  up  alongside  of  him  a  sphere  and  an 
activity  to  which  his  relations  were  transient  and  accidental. 
No  wonder  that  other  men,  finding  their  satisfying  activity 
within  the  sphere  which  was  thus  separated  from  God,  came 
to  think  of  this  absentee  God  as  an  appendage  to  the  scheme 
of  things.  But  if  man  himself  be  inexplicable,  save  as  sharing/ 
in  the  wider  life  of  universal  reason,  if  the  process  of  history! 
be  realised  as  but  the  working  out  of  an  inherent  divine  pur- 1 
pose,  the  manifestation  of  an  indwelling  divine  force,  then 


112    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

revelation  denotes  no  longer  an  interference  with  that  evolu- 
tion. It  is  a  factor  in  that  evolution.  It  is  but  the  normal 
relation  of  the  immanent  spirit  of  God  to  the  children  of  men 
at  the  crises  of  their  fate.  Then  revelation  is  an  experience 
of  men  precisely  in  the  line  and  according  to  the  method  of 
all  their  nobler  experiences.  It  is  itself  reasonable  and  moral.; 
Inspiration  is  the  normal  and  continuous  effect  of  the  con- 
tact of  the  God  who  is  spirit  with  man  who  is  spirit  too. 
The  relation  is  never  broken.  But  there  are  times  in  which 
it  has  been  more  particularly  felt.  There  have  been  per- 
sonalities to  whom  in  eminent  degree  this  depth  of  communion 
with  God  has  been  vouchsafed.  To  such  persons  and  eras 
the  religious  sense  of  mankind,  by  a  true  instinct,  has  tended 
to  restrict  the  words  '  revelation '  and  *  inspiration.'  This 
restriction,  however,  signifies  the  separation  of  the  grand 
experience  from  the  ordinary,  only  in  degree  and  not  in 
kind.  Such  an  experience  was  that  of  prophets  and  law- 
givers under  the  ancient  covenant.  Such  an  experience,  in 
immeasurably  greater  degree,  was  that  of  Jesus  himself. 
Such  a  turning-point  in  the  life  of  the  race  was  the  advent  of 
Christianity.  The  world  has  not  been  wrong  in  calling  the 
documents  of  these  revelations  sacred  books  and  in  attri- 
buting to  them  divine  authority.  It  has  been  largely  wrong 
in  the  manner  in  which  it  construed  their  authority.  It 
has  been  wholly  wrong  in  imagining  that  the  documents 
themselves  were  the  revelation.  They  are  merely  the  record 
of  a  personal  communion  with  the  transcendent.  It  was 
Lessing  who  first  cast  these  fertile  ideas  into  the  soil  of 
modern  thought.  They  were  never  heartily  taken  up  by 
Kant.  One  can  think,  however,  with  what  enthusiasm  men 
recurred  to  them  after  their  postulates  had  been  verified 
and  the  idea  of  God,  of  man  and  of  the  world  which  they 
implied,  had  been  confirmed  by  Fichte  and  Schelling. 

In  the  philosophical  movement,  the  outline  of  which  we 
have  suggested,  what  one  may  call  the  nidus  of  a  new  faith 
in  Scripture  had  been  prepared.  The  quality  had  been  fore- 
cast which  the  Scripture  must  be  found  to  possess,  if  it  were 
to  retain  its  character  as  document  of  revelation.     In  those 


IV.]        THE  CRITICAL  AND  HISTORICAL  MOVEMENT        113 

very  same  years  the  great  movement  of  biblical  criticism  was 
gathering  force  which,  in  the  course  of  the  nineteenth  century., 
was  to  prove  by  stringent  literary  and  historical  methods, 
what  qualities  the  documents  which  we  know  as  Scripture 
do  possess.  It  was  to  prove  in  the  most  objective  fashion 
that  the  Scripture  does  not  possess  those  qualities  which 
men  had  long  assigned  to  it.  It  was  to  prove  that,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  the  literature  does  possess  the  qualities  which 
the  philosophic  forecast,  above  hinted,  required.  It  was 
thus  actually  to  restore  the  Bible  to  an  age  in  which  many 
reasonable  men  had  lost  their  faith  in  it.  It  was  to  give  a 
genetic  reconstruction  of  the  literature  and  show  the  progress 
of  the  history  which  the  Scripture  enshrines.  After  a  contest 
in  which  the  very  foundations  of  faith  seemed  to  be  removed, 
it  was  to  afford  a  basis  for  a  belief  in  Scripture  and  revelation 
as  positive  and  secure  as  any  which  men  ever  enjoyed,  ^dth 
the  advantage  that  it  is  a  foundation  upon  which  the  modern 
man  can  and  does  securely  build.  The  sjmchronism  of  the 
two  endeavours  is  remarkable.  The  convergence  upon  one 
point,  of  studies  starting,  so  to  say,  from  opposite  poles  and 
having  no  apparent  interest  in  common,  is  instructive.  It 
is  an  illustration  of  that  which  Comte  said,  that  all  the  great 
intellectual  movements  of  a  given  time  are  but  the  mani- 
festation of  a  common  impulse,  which  pervades  and  possesses 
the  minds  of  the  men  of  that  time. 


Tlie  attempt  to  rationalise  the  narrative  of  Scripture  was 
no  new  one.  It  grew  in  intensity  in  the  early  years  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  The  conflict  which  was  presently 
precipitated  concerned  primarily  the  Gospels.  It  was 
natural  that  it  should  do  so.  These  contain  the  most  im- 
portant Scripture  narrative,  that  of  the  life  of  Jesus.  Strauss 
had  in  good  faith  turned  his  attention  to  the  Gospels,  precisely 
because  he  felt  their  central  importance.  His  generation 
was  to  learn  that  they  presented  also  the  greatest  difficulties. 

H 


114    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [oh. 

The  old  rationalistic  interpretation  had  started  from  the 
assumption  that  what  we  have  in  the  gospel  narrative  is  fact. 
Yet,  of  course,  for  the  rationalists,  the  facts  must  be  natural. 
They  had  the  appearance  of  being  supernatural  only  through 
the  erroneous  judgment  of  the  narrators.  It  was  for  the 
interpreter  to  reduce  everything  which  is  related  to  its  simple, 
natural  cause.  The  water  at  Cana  was  certainly  not  turned 
into  wine.  It  must  have  been  brought  by  Jesus  as  a  present 
and  opened  thus  in  jest.  Jesus  was,  of  course,  begotten  in 
the  natural  manner.  A  simple  maiden  must  have  been 
deceived.  The  execution  of  this  task  of  the  rationalising  of 
the  narratives  by  one  Dr.  Paulus,  was  the  reductio  ad  ah$urdum 
of  the  claim.  The  most  spiritual  of  the  narratives,  the  finest 
flower  of  religious  poetry,  was  thus  turned  into  the  meanest 
and  most  trivial  incident  without  any  religious  significance 
whatsoever.  The  obtuseness  of  the  procedure  was  exceeded 
only  by  its  vulgarity. 

Strauss 

On  the  other  hand,  as  Pfleiderer  has  said,  we  must  remember 
the  difficulty  which  beset  the  men  of  that  age.  Their  general 
culture  made  it  difficult  for  them  to  accept  the  miraculous 
element  in  the  gospel  narrative  as  it  stood.  Yet  their  theory 
of  Scripture  gave  them  no  notion  as  to  any  other  way  in 
which  the  narratives  might  be  understood.  The  men  had 
never  asked  themselves  how  the  narratives  arose.  In  the 
preface  to  his  Leben  Jesu,  Strauss  said  :  '  Orthodox  and^ 
rationalists  alike  proceed  from  the  false  assumption  that  we 
have  always  in  the  Gospels  testimony,  sometimes  even  that  of 
eye-witnesses,  to  fact.  They  are,  therefore,  reduced  to  asking 
themselves  what  can  have  been  the  real  and  natural  fact 
which  is  here  witnessed  to  in  such  extraordinary  way.  We 
have  to  realise,'  Strauss  proceeds,  *  that  the  narrators  testify\ 
sometimes,  not  to  outward  facts,  but  to  ideas,  often  most  i 
poetical  and  beautiful  ideas,  constructions  which  even  eye- ' 
witnesses  had  unconsciously  put  upon  facts,  imagination  con- 
cerning them,  reflexions  upon  them,  reflexions  and  imaginings 


IV.]        THE  CRITICAL  AND  HISTORICAL  MOVEMENT        115 

such  as  were  natural  to  the  time  and  at  the  author's  level  of 
culture.  What  we  have  here  is  not  falsehood,  not  misre- 
presentation of  the  truth.  It  is  a  plastic,  naive,  and,  at  the 
same  time,  often  most  profound  apprehension  of  truth,  within 
the  area  of  religious  feeling  and  poetic  insight.  It  results 
in  narrative,  legendary,  mythical  in  nature,  illustrative  often 
of  spiritual  truth  in  a  manner  more  perfect  than  any  hard, 
prosaic  statement  could  achieve.'  Before  Strauss  men  had 
appreciated  that  particular  episodes,  like  the  virgin  birth  and 
the  bodily  resurrection,  might  have  some  such  explanation  as 
this.  No  one  had  ever  undertaken  to  apply  this  method  con- 
sistently, from  one  end  to  the  other  of  the  gospel  narrative. 
What  was  of  more  significance,  no  one  had  clearly  defined 
the  conception  of  legend.  Strauss  was  sure  that  in  the 
application  of  this  notion  to  certain  portions  of  the  Scripture 
no  irreverence  was  shown.  No  moral  taint  was  involved. 
Nothing  which  could  detract  from  the  reverence  in  which  we 
hold  the  Scripture  was  implied.  Rather,  in  his  view,  the 
history  of  Jesus  is  more  wonderful  than  ever,  when  some,  at 
least,  of  its  elements  are  viewed  in  this  way,  when  they  are 
seen  as  the  product  of  the  poetic  spirit,  working  all  uncon- 
sciously at  a  certain  level  of  culture  and  under  the  impulse 
of  a  great  enthusiasm. 

There   is  no  doubt  that  Strauss,  who  was  at  that   time 
an    earnest    Christian,    felt    the    relief    from    certain    diffi- 
culties in  the  biography  of  Jesus  which  this  theory  affords./ 
He  put  it  forth  in  all  sincerity  as  affording  to  others  like 
relief.     He  said  that  while  rationalists  and  supernaturalists 
alike,  by  their  methods,  sacrificed  the  divine  content  of  the 
story  and  clung  only  to  its  form,  his  hjrpothesis  sacrificed  the 
historicity  of  the  narrative  form,  but  kept  the  eternal  and 
spiritual  truth.    In  his  opinion,  the  lapse  of  a  single  generation! 
was  enough  to  give  room  for  this  process  of  the  growth  of  the 
legendary  elements  which  have  found  place  in  the  written 
Gospels    which   we   have.     Ideas   entertained    by   primitive 
Christians  relative  to  their  lost  Master,  have  been,  all  unwit- 
tingly, transformed  into  facts  and  woven  into  the  tale  of  his  ' 
career.     The  legends  of  a  people  are  in  their  basal  elements 


116    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

never  the  work  of  a  single  individual.  They  are  never 
intentionally  produced.  The  imperceptible  growth  of  a  joint 
creative  work  of  this  kind  was  possible,  however,  only  on  the 
supposition  that  oral  tradition  was,  for  a  time,  the  means  of 
transmission  of  the  reminiscences  of  Jesus.  Strauss'  ex- 
planation of  his  theory  has  been  given  above,  to  some  extent 
in  his  own  words.  We  may  see  how  he  understood  himself. 
We  may  appreciate  also  the  genuineness  of  the  religious  spirit 
of  his  work.  At  the  same  time  the  thorough-going  way  in 
which  he  applied  his  principle,  the  relentless  march  of  his 
argument,  the  character  of  his  results,  must  sometimes  have 
been  startling  even  to  himself.  They  certainly  startled 
others.  The  effect  of  his  work  was  instantaneous  and  im- 
mense. It  was  not  at  all  the  effect  which  he  anticipated. 
The  issue  of  the  furious  controversy  which  broke  out  was 
disastrous  both  to  Strauss'  professional  career  and  to  his 
whole  temperament  and  character. 

David  Friedrich  Strauss  was  born  in  1808  in  Ludwigsburg  in 
Wiirttemberg.  He  studied  in  Tubingen  and  in  Berlin.  He 
became  an  instructor  in  the  theological  faculty  in  Tiibingen 
in  1832.  He  published  his  Lehen  Jesu  in  1835.  He  was 
almost  at  once  removed  from  his  position.  In  1836  he  with- 
drew altogether  from  the  professorial  career.  His  answer  to 
his  critics,  written  in  1837,  was  in  bitter  tone.  More  con- 
ciliatory was  his  book,  Uher  Vergdngliches  und  Bleibendes  im 
Christenthum,  pubHshed  in  1839.  Indeed  there  were  some 
concessions  in  the  third  edition  of  his  Lehen  Jesu  in  1838, 
but  these  were  all  repudiated  in  1840.  His  Lehen  Jesu  fur  das 
deutsche  Volk,  published  in  1860,  was  the  effort  to  popularise 
that  which  he  had  done.  It  is,  however,  in  point  of  method, 
superior  to  his  earlier  work.  Comments  were  met  with  even 
greater  bitterness.  Finally,  not  long  before  his  death  in  1874, 
he  published  Der  Alte  und  der  Neue  Glauhe,  in  which  he  de- 
finitely broke  with  Christianity  altogether  and  went  over  to 
materialism  and  pessimism. 

Pfleiderer,  who  had  had  personal  acquaintance  with  Strauss 
and  held  him  in  regard,  once  wrote  :  '  Strauss'  error  did 
not  he  in  his  regarding  some  of  the  gospel  stories  as  legends, 


IV.]        THE  CRITICAL  AND  HISTORICAL  MOVEMENT        117 

and  some  of  the  narratives  of  the  miraculous  as  symbols  of 
ideal  truths.     So  far  Strauss  was  right.     The    contribution 
which  he  made  is  one  which  we  have  all  appropriated  and 
built  upon.     His  error  lay  in  his  looking  for  those  religious  t 
truths  which  are  thus  symbolised,  outside  of  religion  itself,  / 
in  adventurous  metaphysical  speculations.     He  did  not  seek 
them  in  the  facts  of  the  devout  heart  and  moral  will,  as  these  | 
are  illustrated  in  the  actual  life  of  Jesus.'     If  Strauss,  after  ' 
the  disintegration  in  criticism  of  certain  elements  in  the  bio- 
graphy of  Jesus,  had  given  us  a  positive  picture  of  Jesus  I 
as  the  ideal  of  religious  character  and  ethical  force,  his  work 
would  indeed  have  been  attacked.     But  it  would  have  out- 
lived the  attack  and  conferred  a  very  great  benefit.      It 
conferred  a  great  benefit  as  it  was,  although  not  the  benefit 
which  Strauss  supposed.     The  benefit  which  it  really  con- 
ferred was  in  its  critical  method,  and  not  at  all  in  its  results. 

Of  the  mass  of   polemic  and  apologetic  literature   which 
Strauss'   Lehen  Jesu   called   forth,  little  is  at  this  distance 
worth   the   mentioning.     Ullmann,   who   was   far  more   ap- 
preciative than  most  of  his  adversaries,  points  out  the  real 
weakness  of  Strauss'  work.     That  weakness  lay  in  the  failure 
to   draw   any   distinction    between    the   historical   and   the) 
mythical.     He  threatened  to  dissolve  the  whole  history  into! 
myth.     He  had  no  sense  for  the  ethical  element  in  the  per-\ 
sonality  and  teaching  of  Jesus  nor  of  the  creative  force  which 
this  must  have  exerted.     Ullmann  says  with  cogency  that, 
according  to  Strauss,  the  Church  created  its  Christ  virtually  ! 
out  of  pure  imagination.     But  we  are  then  left  with  the  query  :  ^ 
What   created    the   Church  ?      To    this    query    Strauss   has 
absolutely  no  answer  to  give.     The  answer  is,  says  Ullmann, 
that  the  ethical  personality  of  Jesus  created  the  Church. 
This  ethical  personality  is  thus  a  supreme  historic  fact  and 
a  subhme  historic  cause,  to  which  we  must  endeavour  to  pene- 
trate, if  need  be  through  the  veil  of  legend.     The  old  ration- 
alists  had    made    themselves    ridiculous   by   their  effort  to' 
explain  everything  in  some  natural  way.     Strauss  and  his 
followers  often  appeared  frivolous,  since,  according  to  them, 
there  was  little  left  to  be  explained.     If  a  portion  of  the 


118    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

narrative  presented  a  difficulty,  it  was  declared  mythical. 
Wliat  was  needed  was  such  a  discrimination  between  the 
legendary  and  historical  elements  in  the  Gospels  as  could 
be  reached  only  by  patient,  painstaking  study  of  the 
actual  historical  quality  and  standing  of  the  documents. 
No  adequate  study  of  this  kind  had  ever  been  under- 
taken. Strauss  did  not  undertake  it,  nor  even  perceive 
that  it  was  to  be  undertaken.  There  had  been  many  men 
of  vast  learning  in  textual  and  philological  criticism.  Here, 
however,  a  new  sort  of  critique  was  applied  to  a  problem 
which  had  but  just  now  been  revealed  in  all  its  length  and 
breadth.  The  establishing  of  the  principles  of  this  historical 
criticism — the  so-called  Higher  Criticism — was  the  herculean 
task  of  the  generation  following  Strauss.  To  the  develop- 
ment of  that  science  another  Tiibingen  professor,  Baur,] 
made  permanent  contribution.  With  Strauss  himself, 
sadder  than  the  ruin  of  his  career,  was  the  tragedy  of  I 
the  uprooting  of  his  faith.  This  tragedy  followed  in  many\ 
places  in  the  wake  of  the  recognition  of  Strauss'  fatal 
half-truth. 

Baur 

Baur,  Strauss'  own  teacher  in  Tiibingen,  afterward  famous 
as  biblical  critic  and  church-historian,  said  of  Strauss'  book, 
that  through  it  was  revealed  in  startling  fashion  to  that 
generation  of  scholars,  how  little  real  knowledge  they  had  of 
the  problem  which  the  Gospels  present.  To  Baur  it  was  clear 
that  if  advance  was  to  be  made  beyond  Strauss'  negative 
results,  the  criticism  of  the  gospel  history  must  wait  upon 
an  adequate  criticism  of  the  documents  which  are  ourl 
sources  for  that  history.  Strauss'  failure  had  brought 
home  to  the  minds  of  men  the  fact  that  there  were  certain 
preliminary  studies  which  must  needs  be  taken  up.  Mean-| 
time  the  other  work  must  wait.  As  one  surveys  the  litera- 
ture of  the  next  thirty  years  this  fact  stands  out.  Many 
apologetic  lives  of  Jesus  had  to  be  written  in  reply  to  Strauss. 
But  they  are  almost  completely  negligible.     No  constructive 


IV.]        THE  CRITICAL  AND  HISTORICAL  MOVEMENT        119 

work  was  done  in  this  field  until  nearly  a  generation  had 
passed. 

Since  all  history,  said  Baur,  before  it  reaches  us  must  pass 
through  the  medium  of  a  narrator,  our  first  question  as  to/ 
the  gospel  history  is  not,  what  objective  reality  can  be  ac- 
corded to  the  narrative  itself.  There  is  a  previous  question. 
This  concerns  the  relation  of  the  narrative  to  the  narrator. 
It  might  be  very  difficult  for  us  to  make  up  our  minds  as  to 
what  it  was  that,  in  a  given  case,  the  witness  saw.  We  have 
not  material  for  such  a  judgment.  We  have  probably  much 
evidence,  up  and  down  his  writings,  as  to  what  sort  of  man  * 
the  witness  was,  in  what  manner  he  would  be  likely  to  see 
anything  and  with  what  personal  equation  he  would  relate 
that  which  he  saw.  Baur  would  seem  to  have  been  the  first 
vigorously  and  consistently  to  apply  this  principle  to  the 
gospel  narratives.  Before  we  can  penetrate  deeply  into  the 
meaning  of  an  author  we  must  know,  if  we  may,  his  purpose  ) 
in  writing.  Every  author  belongs  to  the  time  in  which  he 
lives.  The  greater  the  importance  of  his  subject  for  the 
parties  and  struggles  of  his  day,  the  safer  is  the  assumption 
that  both  he  and  his  work  will  bear  the  impress  of  these 
struggles.  He  will  represent  the  interests  of  one  or  another  I 
of  the  parties.  His  work  will  have  a  tendency  of  some  kind. 
This  was  one  of  Baur's  oft-used  words — the  tendency  of  a 
writer  and  of  his  work.  We  must  ascertain  that  tendency. 
The  explanation  of  many  things  both  in  the  form  and  sub- 
stance of  a  writing  would  be  given  could  we  but  know  that. 
The  letters  of  Paul,  for  example,  are  written  in  palpable 
advocacy  of  o^Dinions  which  were  bitterly  opposed  by  other] 
apostles.  The  biographies  of  Jesus  suggest  that  they  also  ) 
represent,  the  one  this  tendency,  the  other  that.  We  have 
no  cause  to  assert  that  this  trait  of  which  we  speak  implies 
conscious  distortion  of  the  facts  which  the  author  would  relate. 
The  simple-minded  are  generally  those  least  aware  of  the  bias 
in  the  working  of  their  own  minds.  It  is  obvious  that  until 
we  have  reckoned  with  such  elements  as  these,  we  cannot  truly 
Judge  of  that  which  the  Gospels  say.  To  the  elaboration  of 
the  principles  of  this  historical  criticism  Baur  gave  the  labour 


120    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

of  his  life.     His  biblical  work  alone  would  have  been  epoch- 
making. 

Ferdinand  Christian  Baur  was  born  in  1793  in  Schmieden, 
near  Stuttgart.  He  became  a  professor  in  Tiibingen  in  1826 
and  died  there  in  1860.  He  was  an  ardent  disciple  of  Hegel. 
His  greatest  work  was  surely  in  the  field  of  the  history  of 
dogma.  His  works,  Die  ChristUche  Lehre  von  der  Versohnung, 
1838,  Die  ChristUche  Lehre  von  der  Dreieinigkeit  und  Mensch- 
werdung  Gottes ,  1 84 1  - 1 843,  his  Lehrbuch  der  Christlichen  Dogmen- 
geschichte,  1847,  together  constitute  a  contribution  to  which 
Harnack's  work  in  our  own  time  alone  furnishes  a  parallel. 
Baur  had  begun  his  thorough  biblical  studies  before  the 
publication  of  Strauss'  book.  The  direction  of  those  studies 
was  more  than  ever  confirmed  by  his  insight  of  the  short- 
comings of  Strauss'  work.  Very  characteristically  also  he 
had  begun  his  investigations,  not  at  the  most  difficult  point, 
that  of  the  Gospels,  as  Strauss  had  done,  but  at  the  easiest 
point,  the  Epistles  of  Paul.  As  early  as  1831  he  had  pub- 
lished a  tractate,  Die  Christus-Partei  in  der  Corinthischen 
Gemeinde.  In  that  book  he  had  delineated  the  bitter  contest 
between  Paul  and  the  Judaising  element  in  the  Apostolic 
Church  which  opposed  Paul  whithersoever  he  went.  In  1835 
his  disquisition.  Die  sogenannten  Pastoral-Briefe,  appeared. 
In  the  teachings  of  these  letters  he  discovered  the  antithesis 
to  the  gnostic  heresies  of  the  second  century.  He  thought 
also  that  the  stage  of  organisation  of  the  Church  which  they 
imply,  accorded  better  with  this  supposition  than  with  that 
of  their  apostolic  authorship.  The  same  general  theme  is 
treated  in  a  much  larger  way  in  Baur's  Paulus,  der  Apostel 
Jesu  Christi,  in  1845.  Here  the  results  of  his  study  of  the 
book  of  the  Acts  are  combined  with  those  of  his  inquiries  as 
to  the  Pauline  Epistles.  In  the  history  of  the  apostolic  age 
men  had  been  accustomed  to  see  the  evidence  only  of  peace 
and  harmony.  Baur  sought  to  show  that  the  period  had  been 
one  of  fierce  struggle,  between  the  narrow  Judaic  and  legalistic 
form  of  faith  in  the  Messiah  and  that  conception,  introduced  \ 
by  Paul,  of  a  world-religion  free  from  the  law.  Out  of  this  \ 
conflict,  which  lasted  a  hundred  and  fifty  years,  went  forth 


IV.]        THE  CRITICAL  AND  HISTORICAL  MOVEMENT        121 

the  Catholic  Church.  The  monuments  of  this  struggle  and 
witnesses  of  this  process  of  growth  are  the  New  Testament 
writings,  most  of  which  were  produced  in  the  second  cen- 
tury. The  only  documents  which  we  have  which  were  written 
before  a.d.  70,  were  the  four  great  Epistles  of  Paul,  those  f- 
to  the  Galatians,  to  the  Romans,  and  to  the  Corinthians,  I 
together  with  the  Apocalypse. 

Many  details  in  Baur's  view  are  now  seen  to  have  been 
overstated  and  others  false.  Yet  this  was  the  first  time  that  a 
true  historical  method  had  been  applied  to  the  New  Testament 
literature  as  a  whole.  Baur's  contribution  lay  in  the  origin- 
ality of  his  conception  of  Christianity,  in  his  emphasis  upon 
Paul,  in  his  realisation  of  the  magnitude  of  the  struggle  which  \ 
Paul  inaugurated  against  Jewish  prejudices  in  the  primitive  ' 
Church.  In  his  idea,  the  issue  of  that  struggle  was,  on  the  one 
hand,  the  freeing  of  Christianity  from  Judaism  and  on  the  \ 
other,  the  developing  of  Christian  thought  into  a  system  of 
dogma  and  of  the  scattered  Christian  communities  into  an 
organised  Cliurch  The  Fourth  Gospel  contains,  according 
to  Baur,  a  Christian  gnosis  parallel  to  the  gnosis  which  was  I 
more  and  more  repudiated  by  the  Church  as  heresy.  The  1 
Logos,  the  divine  principle  of  life  and  light,  appears  bodily 
in  the  phenomenal  world  in  the  person  of  Jesus.  It  enters 
into  conflict  with  the  darkness  and  evil  of  the  world.  This 
speculation  is  but  thinly  clothed  in  the  form  of  a  biography 
of  Jesus.  That  an  account  completely  dominated  by  specu- 
lative motives  gives  but  slight  guarantee  of  historical  truth, 
was  for  Baur  self-evident.  The  author  remains  unknown, 
the  age  uncertain.  The  book,  however,  can  hardly  have 
appeared  before  the  time  of  the  Montanist  movement,  that  is, 
toward  the  end  of  the  second  century.  Scholars  now  rate  far 
more  highly  than  did  Baur  the  element  of  genuine  Johannine 
tradition  which  may  lie  behind  the  Fourth  Gospel  and  account 
for  its  name.  They  do  not  find  traces  of  Montanism  or  of 
paschal  controversies.  But  the  main  contention  stands. 
The  Fourth  Gospel  represents  the  beginning  of  elaborate  re-\ 
flexion  upon  the  life  and  work  of  Jesus.  It  is  what  it  is 
because  of  the  fusion  of  the  ethical  and  spiritual  content  of  ) 


122    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

the  revelation  in  the  personaHty  of  Jesus,  with  metaphysical 
abstractions  and  philosophical  interpretation. 

Baur  was  by  no  means  so  fortunate  in  the  solution  which 
he  offered  of  the  problem  which  the  synoptic  Gospels  present. 
His  opinions  are  of  no  interest  except  as  showing  that  he  too 
worked  diligently  upon  a  question  which  for  a  long  time 
seemed  only  to  grow  in  complexity  and  which  has  busied 
scholars  practically  from  Baur's  day  to  our  own.  His  zeal 
here  also  to  discover  dogmatic  purposes  led  him  astray. 
The  Tendenzkritik  had  its  own  tendencies.  The  chief  was  to 
exaggeration  and  one-sidedness.  Baur  had  the  kind  of  ear 
which  hears  grass  grow.  There  is  much  overstrained  acumen. 
Many  radically  false  conclusions  are  reached  by  prejudiced 
operation  with  an  historical  formula,  which  in  the  last  analysis 
is  that  of  Hegel.  Everything  is  to  be  explained  on  the  prin- 
ciple of  antithesis.  Again,  the  assumption  of  conscious  purpose 
in  everything  which  men  do  or  write  is  a  grave  exaggeration. 
It  is  often  in  contradiction  of  that  wonderful  unconscious- 
ness with  which  men  and  institutions  move  to  the  fulfilment 
of  a  purpose  for  the  good,  the  purpose  of  God,  into  which 
their  own  life  is  grandly  taken  up.  To  make  each  phase 
of  such  a  movement  the  contribution  of  some  one  man's 
scheme  or  endeavour  is,  as  was  once  said,  to  make  God  act 
like  a  professor. 


The  method  of  this  book  is  that  it  seeks  to  deal  only  with 
men  who  have  inaugurated  movements,  or  marked  some  turn- 
ing-point in  their  course  which  has  proved  of  more  than  usual 
significance.  The  compass  of  the  book  demands  such  a  limi- 
tation. But  by  this  method  whole  chapters  in  the  life  of 
learning  are  passed  over,  in  which  the  substance  of  achieve- 
ment has  been  the  cariying  out  of  a  plan  of  which  we  have 
been  able  to  note  only  the  inception.  There  is  a  sense  in 
which  the  carrying  out  of  a  plan  is  both  more  difficult  and 
more  worthy  than  the  mere  setting  it  in  motion.  When  one 
thinks  of  the  labour  and  patience  which  have  been  expended, 


IV.]        THE  CRITICAL  AND  HISTORICAL  MOVEMENT        123 

for  example,  upon  the  problem  of  the  Gospels  in  the  past 
seventy  years,  these  truths  come  home  to  us.  WTien  one 
reminds  himself  of  the  hypotheses  which  have  been  made  but 
to  be  abandoned,  which  have  yet  had  the  value  that  they  at 
least  indicated  the  area  within  which  solutions  do  not  lie, — 
when  one  thinks  of  the  wellnigh  immeasurable  toil  by  which 
we  have  been  led  to  large  results  which  now  seem  secure, 
one  is  made  to  realise  that  the  conditions  of  the  advance  of 
science  are,  for  theologians,  not  different  from  those  which 
obtain  for  scholars  who,  in  any  other  field,  would  establish 
truth  and  lead  men.  In  a  general  way,  however,  it  may  be 
said  that  the  course  of  opinion  in  these  two  generations,  in 
reference  to  such  questions  as  those  of  the  dates  and  authorship 
of  the  New  Testament  writings,  has  been  one  of  rather  note- 
worthy retrogression  from  many  of  the  Tiibingen  positions. 
Harnack's  Geschichte  der  altchristUchen  Literatur,  1893,  and 
his  Chronologie  der  altchristUchen  Literatur,  1897,  present  a 
marked  contrast  to  Baur's  scheme. 

The  Canon 

The  minds  of  New  Testament  scholars  in  the  last  generation 
have  been  engaged  with  a  question  which,  in  its  full  significance, 
was  hardly  present  to  the  attention  of  Baur's  school.  It  is 
the  question  of  the  New  Testament  as  a  whole.  It  is  the 
question  as  to  the  time  and  manner  and  motives  of  the  gather- 
ing together  of  the  separate  writings  into  a  canon  of  Scripture 
which,  despite  the  diversity  of  its  elements,  exerted  its  in-  I 
fiuence  as  a  unit  and  to  which  an  authority  was  ascribed, 
which  the  particular  writings  cannot  originally  have  had. 
When  and  how  did  the  Christians  come  to  have  a  sacred  book| 
which  they  placed  on  an  equality  with  the  Old  Testament, 
which  last  they  had  taken  over  from  the  synagogue  ?  How 
did  they  choose  the  writings  which  were  to  belong  to  this  new 
collection  ?  Why  did  they  reject  books  which  we  know  were 
read  for  edification  in  the  early  churches  ?  Deeper  even  than 
the  question  of  the  growth  of  the  collection  is  that  of  the 
growth  of  the  apprehension  concerning  it.     This  apprehension 


124    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

of  these  twenty-seven  different  writings  as  constituting  the 
sole  document  of  Christian  revelation,  given  by  the  Holy 
Spirit,  the  identical  holy  book  of  the  Christian  Church,  gave 
to  the  book  a  significance  altogether  different  from  that  which 
its  constituent  elements  must  have  had  for  men  to  whom 
they  had  appeared  as  but  the  natural  literary  deposit  of  the 
religious  movement  of  the  apostolic  age.  This  apprehension 
took  possession  of  the  mind  of  the  Christian  community. 
It  was  made  the  subject  of  deliverances  by  councils  of  the 
Church.  How  did  this  great  transformation  take  place  ? 
Was  it  an  isolated  achievement,  or  was  it  part  of  a  general 
movement  ?  Did  not  this  development  of  life  in  the  Christian 
communities  which  gave  them  a  New  Testament  belong  to 
an  evolution  which  gave  them  also  the  so-called  Apostles' 
Creed  and  a  monarchical  organisation  of  the  Church  and 
the  beginnings  of  a  ritual  of  worship  ? 

It  is  clear  that  we  have  here  a  question  of  greatest  moment. 
With  the  rise  of  this  idea  of  the  canon,  with  the  assigning  to 
this  body  of  literature  the  character  of  Scripture,  we  have  the 
beginning  of  the  larger  mastery  which  the  New  Testament  has 
exerted  over  the  minds  and  life  of  men.  Compared  with  this 
question,  investigations  as  to  the  authorship  and  as  to  the 
time,  place  and  circumstance  of  the  production  of  particular 
books,  came,  for  the  time,  to  occupy  a  secondary  rank. 
As  they  have  emerged  again,  they  wear  a  new  aspect  and  are 
approached  in  a  different  spirit.  The  writings  are  revealed  as 
belonging  to  a  far  larger  context,  that  of  the  whole  body  of 
the  Christian  literature  of  the  age.  It  in  no  way  follows 
from  that  which  we  have  said  that  the  body  of  documents, 
which  ultimately  found  themselves  together  in  the  New 
Testament,  have  not  a  unity  other  than  the  outward  one 
which  was  by  consensus  of  opinion  or  conciliar  decree  imposed 
upon  them.  They  do  represent,  in  the  large  and  in  varying 
degrees,  an  inward  and  spiritual  unity.  There  was  an  in- 
spiration of  the  main  body  of  these  writings,  the  outward 
condition  of  which,  at  all  events,  was  the  nearness  of  their 
writers  to  Jesus  or  to  his  eye-witnesses,  and  the  consequence 
of  which  was  the  unique  relation  which  the  more  important 


IV.]        THE  CRITICAL  AND  HISTORICAL  MOVEMENT        125 

of  these  documents  historically  bore  to  the  formation  of  the 
Christian  Church.  There  was  a  heaven  which  lay  about  i 
the  infancy  of  Christianity  which  only  slowly  faded  into  the  | 
common  light  of  day.  That  heaven  was  the  spirit  of  the 
Master  himself.  The  chief  of  these  writings  do  centrally 
enshrine  the  first  pure  illumination  of  that  spirit.  But  the 
churchmen  who  made  the  canon  and  the  Fathers  who  argued 
about  it  very  often  gave  mistaken  reasons  for  facts  in  respect 
of  which  they  nevertheless  were  right.  They  gave  what  they 
considered  sound  external  reasons.  They  alleged  apostolic 
authorship.  They  should  have  been  content  with  internal 
evidence  and  spiritual  effectiveness.  The  apostles  had  come, 
in  the  mind  of  the  early  Church,  to  occupy  a  place  of  unique 
distinction.  Writings  long  enshrined  in  affection  for  their 
potent  influence,  but  whose  origin  had  not  been  much  con- 
sidered, were  now  assigned  to  apostles,  that  they  might  have 
authority  and  distinction.  The  theory  of  the  canon  came 
after  the  fact.  The  theory  was  often  wrong.  The  canon  had 
been,  in  the  main  and  in  its  inward  principle,  soundly  con- 
stituted. Modern  critics  reversed  the  process.  They  began 
where  the  Church  Fathers  left  off.  They  tore  down  first 
that  which  had  been  last  built  up.  Modern  criticism,  too, 
passed  through  a  period  in  which  points  like  those  of  author- 
ship and  date  of  Gospels  and  Epistles  seemed  the  only  ones 
to  be  considered.  The  results  being  here  often  negative, 
complete  disintegration  of  the  canon  seemed  threatened, 
through  discovery  of  errors  in  the  processes  by  which  the 
canon  had  been  outwardly  built  up.  Men  reahse  now  that 
that  was  a  mistake. 

Two  things  have  been  gained  in  this  discussion.     There  is/ 
first  the  recognition  that  the  canon  is  a  growth.     The  holy/ 
book  and  the  conception  of  its  holiness,  as  well,  were  evolved. 
Christianity  was  not  primarily  a  book-religion  save  in  the  i 
sense  that  almost  all  Christians  revered  the  Old  Testament.  ) 
Other  writings  than  those  which  we  esteem  canonical  were 
long  used  in  churches.     Some  of  those  afterward  canonical 
were  not  used  in  all  the  churches.     In  similar  fashion  we  have 
learned  that  identical  statements  of  faith  were  not  current 


126    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

in  the  earliest  churches.     Nor  was  there  one  uniform  system 
of  organisation  and  government.     There  was  a  time  con- 
cerning which  we  cannot  accurately  use  the  word  Church./ 
There  were  churches,  very  simple,  worshipping  communities.! 
But  the  Church,  as  outward  magnitude,  as  triumphant  or-> 
ganisation,  grew.    So  there  were  many  creeds  or,  at  least,  in-  ' 
formally  accredited  and  current  beginnings  of  doctrine.  By  and 
by  there  was  a  formally  accepted  creed.     So  there  were  first  \ 
dearly  loved  memorials  of  Jesus  and  letters  of  apostolic  men. 
Only  by  and  by  was  there  a  New  Testament.     The  first  gain 
is  the  recognition  of  this  state  of  things.     The  second  follows.  / 
It  is  the  recognition  that,  despite  a  sense  in  which  this  litera- 
ture is  unique,  there  is  also  a  sense  in  which  it  is  but  a  part  of 
the  whole  body  of  early  Christian  literature.     From  the  exact 
and  exhaustive  study  of  the  early  Christian  literature  as  a 
whole,  we  are  to  expect  a  clearer  understanding  and  a  juster 
estimate  of  the  canonical  part  of  it.     It  is  not  easy  to  say  to 
whom  we  have  to  ascribe  the  discovery  and  elaboration  of 
these  truths.     The  historians  of  dogma  have  done  much  for 
this  body  of  opinion.     The  historians  of  Christian  literature 
have  perhaps  done  more.    Students  of  institutions  and  of  the 
canon  law  have  had  their  share.     Baur  had  more  than  an 
inkling  of  the  true  state  of  things.     But  by  far  the  most  con- 
spicuous teacher  of  our  generation,  in  two  at  least  of  these  t 
particular  fields,  has  been  Hamack.     In  his  lifelong  labour  / 
upon  the  sources  of  Christian  history,  he  had  come  upon  this 
question  of  the  canon  again  and  again.     In  his  Lehrbuch  der  r 
Dogmengeschichte,    1887-1890,    4te.    Aufl.,    1910,    the    view  | 
of  the  canon,  which  was  given  above,  is  absolutely  funda- 
mental.     In  his  Geschichte  der  altchristlichen    Liter atur  his 
Eusebius,  1893,  and  Chronologie  der  altchristlichen  Literatur, 
1897-1904,  the  evidence  is  offered  in  rich  detail.      It  was 
in    his    tractate,  Das    Neue    Testament    um    das   Jahr   200, 
1889,  that  he  contended  for  the    later  date  against  Zahn, 
who  had  urged  that  the  outline  of  the  New  Testament  was 
established  and  the  conception  of  it  as  Scripture  present,  by 
the  end  of  the  first  century.     Hamack  argues  that  the  decision  \ 
practically  shaped  itself  between  the  time  of  Justin  Martyr,  I 


IV.]        THE  CRITICAL  AND  HISTORICAL  MOVEMENT        127 

c.  A.D.  150,  and  that  of  Irenaeus,  c.  a.d.  180.  The  studies  of 
the  last  twenty  years  have  more  and  more  confirmed  this 
view. 

Life  of  Jesus 

We  said  that  the  work  of  Strauss  revealed  nothing  so  clearly 
as  the  ignorance  of  his  time  concerning  the  documents  of  the 
early  Christian  movement.  The  labours  of  Baur  and  of  his 
followers  were  directed  toward  overcoming  this  difficulty. 
Suddenly  the  public  interest  was  stirred  and  the  earlier  ex- 
citement recalled  by  the  pubhcation  of  a  new  hfe  of  Jesus. 
The  author  w^as  a  Frenchman,  Ernest  Renan,  at  one  time  a  | 
candidate  for  the  priesthood  in  the  Roman  Church.  He  was 
a  man  of  learning  and  literary  skill,  who  made  his  Vie  de 
Jesus,  which  appeared  in  1863,  the  starting-point  for  a  series) 
of  historical  works  under  the  general  title,  Les  Origines  du 
Christianisme.  In  the  next  year  appeared  Strauss'  popular 
work,  Leben  Jesu  fur  das  deutsche  Volk.  In  1864  was  pub- 
lished also  Weizsacker's  contribution  to  the  life  of  Christ, 
his  U Titer suchungen  uber  die  evangelisclie  Geschichte,  To  the 
same  year  belonged  Schenkel's  CharaTcterhild  Jesu.  In  the 
years  from  1867-1872  appeared  Keim's  Geschichte  Jesu  von 
Nazara.  There  is  something  very  striking  in  this  recurrence 
to  the  topic.  After  all,  this  was  the  point  for  the  sake  of 
w^hich  those  laborious  investigations  had  been  undertaken. 
This  w^as  and  is  the  theme  of  undying  religious  interest,  the 
character  and  career  of  the  Nazarene.  Renan's  philosophical! 
studies  had  been  mainly  in  English,  studies  of  Locke  andl 
Hume.  But  Herder  also  had  been  his  beloved  guide.  For  his  \ 
biblical  and  oriental  studies  he  had  turned  almost  exclusively 
to  the  Germans.  There  is  a  deep  religious  spirit  in  the  work 
of  the  period  of  his  conflict  with  the  Church.  The  enthusiasm 
for  Christ  sustained  him  in  his  struggle.  Of  the  days  before 
he  withdrew  from  the  Church  he  wrote  :  *  For  two  months) 
I  w^as  a  Protestant  like  a  professor  in  Halle  or  Tubingen. / 
French  was  at  that  time  a  language  much  better  known  in  the 
world  at  large,  particularly  the  English-speaking  w^orld.  than 
was  German.     Renan's  book  had  great  art  and  charm.     It 


128    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

took  a  place  almost  at  once  as  a  bit  of  world-literature.  The 
number  of  editions  in  French  and  of  translations  into  other 
languages  is  amazing.  Beyond  question,  the  critical  position 
was  made  known  through  Renan  to  multitudes  who  would 
never  have  been  reached  by  the  German  works  which  were 
really  Kenan's  authorities.  It  is  idle  to  say  with  Pfleiderer 
that  it  is  a  pity  that,  having  possessed  so  much  learning 
Renan  had  not  possessed  more.  That  is  not  quite  the  point: 
The  book  has  much  breadth  and  solidity  of  learning.  Yet 
Renan  has  scarcely  the  historian's  quality.  His  work  is  a/ 
work  of  art.  It  has  the  halo  of  romance.  Imagination  and 
poetical  feeling  make  it  in  a  measure  what  it  is. 

Renan  was  bom  in  1823  in  Treguier  in  Brittany.     He  setj 
out   for  the  priesthood,   but  turned  aside   to   the  study  of/ 
oriental  languages  and  history.      He  made  long  sojourn  in 
the  East.     He  spoke  of  Palestine  as  having  been  to  him  a 
fifth  Gospel.     He  became  Professor  of  Hebrew  in  the  College 
de  France.     He  was  suspended  from  his  office  in  1863,  and) 
permitted  to  read  again  only  in   1871.     He  had  formally 
separated  himself  from  the  Roman  Church  in  1845.     He  was 
a   member   of   the   Academy.     His   diction   is   unsurpassed. 
He  died  in  1894.     In  his  own  phrase,  he  sought  to  bring  '^ 
Jesus  forth  from  the  darkness  of  dogma  into  the  midst  of  the  \ 
life  of  his  people.     He  paints  him  first  as  an  idyllic  national 
leader,  then  as  a  struggling  and  erring  hero,  always  aiming 
at  the  highest,  but  doomed  to  tragic  failure  through  the  resis- 
tance offered  by  reality  to  his  ideal.     He  calls  the  traditional V 
Christ  an  abstract  being  who  never  was  alive.     He  would ! 
bring   the   marvellous   human   figure   before   our   eyes.     He 
heightens  the  brilliancy  of  his  delineation  by  the  deep  shadows 
of   mistakes   and   indiscretion   upon  Jesus'   part.     In   some 
respects  an  epic  or  an  historical  romance,  without  teaching  I 
us  history  in  detail,  may  yet  enable  us  by  means  of  the  artist's 
intuition  to  realise  an  event  or  period,  or  make  presentation 
to  ourselves  of  a  personality,  better  than  the  scant  records 
acknowledged  by  the  strict  historian  could  ever  do. 

Our   materials   for  a  real  biography  of  Jesus  are  inade- 
quate.    This  was  the  fact  which,  by  all  these  biographies 


IV.]        THE  CRITICAL  AND  HISTORICAL  MOVEMENT        129 

of  Jesus,  was  brought  home  to  men's  minds.  Keim's 
book,  the  most  learned  of  those  mentioned,  is  hardly  more 
than  a  vast  collection  of  material  for  the  history  of  Jesus' 
age,  which  has  now  been  largely  superseded  by  Schiirer's 
Geschichte  des  Jiidischen  Volkes  im  Zeitalter  Jesu  Christi,  2 
Bde.,  1886-1890.  There  have  been  again,  since  the  decade  of 
the  sixties,  periods  of  approach  to  the  great  problem.  Weiss 
and  Beyschlag  published  at  the  end  of  the  eighties  lives  of 
Jesus  which,  especially  the  former,  are  noteworthy  in  their 
treatment  of  the  critical  material.  They  do  not  for  a  moment 
face  the  question  of  the  person  of  Christ.  The  same  remark 
might  be  made,  almost  without  exception,  as  to  those  lives  of 
Jesus  which  have  appeared  in  numbers  in  England  and 
America.  The  best  books  of  recent  years  are  Albert  Reville's 
Jesus  de  Nazareth,  1897,  and  Oscar  Holtzmann's  Leben  Jesu, 
1901.  So  great  are  the  difficulties  and  in  such  disheartening 
fashion  are  they  urged  from  all  sides,  that  one  cannot  with- 
hold enthusiastic  recognition  of  the  service  which  Holtzmann 
particularly  has  here  rendered,  in  a  calm,  objective,  and 
withal  deeply  devout  handling  of  his  theme.  Meantime  new 
questions  have  arisen,  questions  of  the  relation  of  Jesus  to 
Messianism,  like  those  touched  upon  by  Wrede  in  his  Das 
Messias  Geheimniss  in  den  Evangelien,  1901,  and  questions 
as  to  the  eschatological  trait  in  Jesus'  own  teaching. 
Schweitzer's  book.  Von  Reimarus  zu  Wrede  :  eine  Geschichte 
der  Leben  Jesu-Forschung,  1906,  not  merely  sets  forth  this 
deeply  interesting  chapter  in  the  history  of  the  thought  of 
modern  men,  but  has  also  serious  interpretative  value  in  itself. 
For  English  readers  Sanday's  Life  of  Christ  in  Recent  Research, 
1907,  follows  the  descriptive  aspect,  at  least,  of  the  same 
purpose  with  Schweitzer's  book,  covering,  however,  only 
the  last  twenty  years. 

It  is  characteristic  that  Ritschl,  notwithstanding  his  em- 
phasis upon  the  historical  Jesus,  asserted  the  impossibility 
of  a  biography  of  Jesus.  The  imderstanding  of  Jesus  is 
through  faith.  For  Wrede,  on  the  other  hand,  such  a  bio- 
graphy is  impossible  because  of  the  nature  of  our  sources. 
Not  alone  are  they  scant,  but  they  are  not  biographical. 

I 


130    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

They  are  apologetic,  propagandist,  interested  in  everything  ex- 
cept those  problems  which  a  biographer  must  raise.  The  last 
few  years  have  even  conjured  up  the  question  whether  Jesus 
ever  lived.  One  may  say  with  all  simplicity,  that  the  question 
has,  of  course,  as  much  rightfulness  as  has  any  other  question 
any  man  could  raise.  The  somewhat  extended  discussion  has, 
however,  done  nothing  to  make  evident  how  it  could  arise, 
save  in  minds  unfamiliar  with  the  materials  and  unskilled 
in  historical  research.  The  conditions  which  beset  us  when 
we  ask  for  a  biography  of  Jesus  that  shall  answer  scientific 
requirement  are  not  essentially  different  from  those  which 
meet  us  in  the  case  of  any  other  personage  equally  remote  in 
point  of  time,  and  equally  woven  about — if  any  such  have 
been — by  the  love  and  devotion  of  men.  Bousset's  little 
book.  Was  Wissen  wir  von  Jesus  ?  1904,  convinces  a  quiet 
mind  that  we  know  a  good  deal.  Qualities  in  the  personality 
of  Jesus  obviously  worked  in  transcendent  measure  to  call 
out  devotion.  No  understanding  of  history  is  adequate 
which  has  no  place  for  the  unfathomed  in  personality.  Exactly 
because  we  ourselves  share  this  devotion,  we  could  earnestly 
wish  that  the  situation  as  to  the  biography  of  Jesus  were 
other  than  it  is. 

The  Old  Testament 

We  have  spoken  thus  far  as  if  the  whole  biblical-critical 
problem  had  been  that  of  the  New  Testament.  In  reality 
the  same  impulses  which  had  opened  up  that  question  to  the 
minds  of  men  had  set  them  working  upon  the  problem  of 
the  Old  Testament  as  well.  We  have  seen  how  the  Christians 
made  for  themselves  a  canon  of  the  New  Testament.  By 
the  force  of  that  conception  of  the  canon,  and  through  the 
belief  that,  almost  in  a  literal  sense,  God  was  the  author  of  the 
whole  book,  the  obvious  differences  among  the  writings  had 
been  obscured.  Men  forgot  the  evolution  through  which  the 
writings  had  passed.  The  same  thing  had  happened  for  the 
Old  Testament  in  the  Jewish  synagogues  and  for  the  rabbis 
before  the  Christian  movement.     When  the  Christians  took 


IV.]        THE  CRITICAL  AND  HISTORICAL  MOVEMENT        131 

over  the  Old  Testament  they  took  it  over  in  this  sense.  It 
was  a  closed  book  wherein  all  appreciation  of  the  long  road 
which  the  religion  of  Israel  had  traversed  in  its  evolution 
had  been  lost.  The  relation  of  the  old  covenant  to  the  new 
was  obscured.  The  Old  Testament  became  a  Christian  book. I 
Xot  merely  were  the  Christian  facts  propihesied  in  the  Old 
Testament,  but  its  doctrines  also  were  implied.  Almost  do\^Ti 
to  modem  times  texts  have  been  drawn  indifferently  from 
either  Testament  to  prove  doctrine  and  sustain  theology. 
Moses  and  Jesus,  prophets  and  Paul,  are  cited  to  support  an 
argument,  without  any  sense  of  difference.  What  we  have 
said  is  hardly  more  true  of  Augustine  or  Anselm  than  of  the 
classic  Puritan  divines.  This  was  the  state  of  things  which 
the  critics  faced. 

The  Old  Testament  critical  movement  is  a  parallel  at  all 
points  of  the  one  which  we  have  described  in  reference  to  the 
New.  Of  course,  elder  scholars,  even  Spinoza,  had  raised  1 
the  question  as  to  the  Mosaic  authorship  of  certain  portions  \ 
of  the  Pentateuch.  Roman  Catholic  scholars  in  the  seven- 
teenth century,  for  whom  the  stringent  theory  of  inspiration 
had  less  significance  than  for  Protestants,  had  set  forth  views 
which  showed  an  awakening  to  the  real  condition.  Yet, 
at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century,  no  one  would  have 
forecast  a  revolution  in  opinion  which  would  recognise  the 
legendary  quality  of  considerable  portions  of  the  Pentateuch/ 
and  historical  books,  which  would  leave  but  little  that  is  of 
undisputed  Mosaic  authorship,  which  would  place  the  prophets 
before  the  law,  which  would  concede  the  growth  of  the  Jewish 
canon,  which  would  perceive  the  relation  of  Judaism  to  the 
religions  of  the  other  Semite  peoples  and  would  seek  to 
establish  the  true  relation  of  Judaism  to  Christianity. 

In  the  year  1835,  the  same  year  in  which  Strauss'  Lehen 
Jesu  saw  the  light.,  Wilhelm  Vatke  published  his  Religion  des  | 
Alien  Testaments.  Vatke  was  bom  in  1806,  began  to  teach 
in  Berlin  in  1830,  was  professor  extraordinarius  there  in  1837 
and  died  in  1882,  not  yet  holding  a  full  professorship.  His  I 
book  was  obscurely  written  and  scholastic.  Pubhc  attention 
was   largely   occupied   by  the  conflict  which   Strauss'  work 


132     HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT  [ch. 

had  caused.  Reuss  in  Strassburg  was  working  on  the  same 
lines,  but  pubhshed  the  main  body  of  his  results  much  later. 
The  truth  for  which  these  scholars  and  others  like  them 
argued,  worked  its  way  slowly  by  force  of  its  own  merit. 
Perhaps  it  was  due  to  this  fact  that  the  development  of  Old 
Testament  critical  views  was  subject  to  a  fluctuation  less 
marked  than  that  which  characterised  the  case  of  the  New 
Testament.  It  is  not  necessary  to  describe  the  earlier  stages 
of  the  discussion  in  Vatke's  own  terms.  To  his  honour  be 
it  said  that  the  views  which  he  thus  early  enunciated  were  in 
no  small  degree  identical  with  those  which  were  in  masterful 
fashion  substantiated  in  Holland  by  Kuenen  about  1870,  in  I 
Germany  by  Wellhausen  after  1878,  and  made  known  to 
English  readers  by  Robertson  Smith  in  1881. 

Budde  has  shown  in  his  Kanon  des  Alien  Testaments,  1900, 
that  the  Old  Testament  which  lies  before  us  finished  and  com- 
plete, assumed  its  present  form  only  as  the  result  of  the""| 
growth  of  several  centuries.     At  the  beginning  of  this  process 
of  the  canonisation  stands  that  strange  event,  the  sudden 
appearance  of  a  holy  book  of  the  law  under  King  Josiah,  in'  \ 
621  B.C.     The  end  of  the  process,  through  the  decisions  of  the 
scribes,   falls   after   the   destruction   of  Jerusalem,   possibly 
even  in  the  second  century.     Lagarde  seems  to  have  proved 
that  the  rabbis  of  the  second  century  succeeded  in  destroying! 
all  copies  of  the  Scripture  which  differed  from  the  standardj 
then  set  up.     This  state  of  things  has  enormously  increased 
a  difficulty  which  was  already  great  enough,  that  of  the  de- 
tection and  separation  of  the  various  elements  of  which  many 
of  the  books  in  this  ancient  literature  are  made  up.     Certain 
books  of  the  New  Testament  also  present  the  problem  of 
the  discrimination  of  elements  of  different  ages,  which  have 
been  wrought  together  into  the  documents  as  we  now  have 
them,  in  a  way  that  almost  defies  our  skill  to   disengage. 
The  synoptic  Gospels  are,  of  course,  the  great  example.     The 
book  of  the  Acts  presents  a  problem  of  the  same  kind.     Butj 
the  Pentateuch,  or  rather  Hexateuch,  the  historical  books  in  \ 
less  degree,  the  writings  even  of  some  of  the  prophets,  the    > 
codes  which  formulate  the  law  and  ritual,  are  composites 


IV.]        THE  CRITICAL  AND  HISTORICAL  MOVEMENT        133 

which  have  been  whole  centuries  in  the  making  and  re- 
making. There  was  no  such  thing  as  right  of  authorship  in 
ancient  Israel,  little  of  it  in  the  ancient  world  at  all.  WTiat . 
was  once  written  was  popular  or  priestly  property.  Histories  \ 
were  newly  narrated,  laws  enlarged  and  rearranged,  pro- 
phecies attributed  to  conspicuous  persons.  All  this  took 
place  not  in  deliberate  intention  to  pervert  historic  truth, 
but  because  there  was  no  interest  in  historic  truth  and  no 
conception  of  it.  The  rewriting  of  a  nation's  history  from  the 
point  of  view  of  its  priesthood  bore,  to  the  ancient  Israelite, 
beyond  question,  an  aspect  altogether  different  from  that 
which  the  same  transaction  Avould  bear  to  us.  The  difficulty 
of  the  separation  of  these  materials,  great  in  any  case,  is 
enhanced  by  the  fact  alluded  to,  that  we  have  none  but 
internal  evidence.  The  success  of  the  achievement,  and  the 
unanimity  attained  with  reference  to  the  most  significant 
questions,  is  one  of  the  marvels  of  the  life  of  learning  of 
our  age. 

In  the  Jewish  tradition  it  had  been  assumed  that  the  Mosaic  ] 
law  was  written  dowTi  in  the  wilderness.  Then,  in  the  times 
of  the  Judges  and  of  the  Kings,  the  historical  books  took 
shape,  with  David's  Psalms  and  the  wise  words  of  Solomon. 
At  the  end  of  the  period  of  the  Kings  we  have  the  prophetic 
literature  and  finally  Ezra  and  Nehemiah.  De  Wette  had 
disputed  this  order,  but  Wellhausen  in  his  Prolegomena  zur 
Geschichte  Israels,  1883,  may  be  said  to  have  proved  that 
this  view  was  no  longer  tenable.  Men  ask,  could  the  law, 
or  even  any  greater  part  of  it,  have  been  given  to  nomads  in 
the  wilderness  ?  Do  not  all  parts  of  it  assume  a  settled  state 
of  society  and  an  agricultural  life  ?  Do  the  historical  books 
from  Judges  to  the  II.  Kings  know  anything  about  the  law  ? 
Are  the  practices  of  worship  which  they  imply  consonant 
with  the  supposition  that  the  law  was  in  force  ?  How  is 
it  that  the  law  appears  both  under  Josiah,  and  again  under 
Ezra,  as  something  new,  thus  far  unknowTi,  and  yet  as  ruling 
the  religious  life  of  the  people  from  that  day  forth  ?  It  seems 
impossible  to  escape  the  conclusion  that  only  after  Josiah's  re- 
formation, more  completely  after  the  restoration  under  Ezra, 


134    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

did  the  religion  of  the  law  exist.  The  centralisation  of  worship 
at  one  point,  such  as  the  book  of  Deuteronomy  demands, 
seems  to  have  been  the  thing  achieved  by  the  reform  under 
Josiah.  The  establishment  of  the  priestly  hierarchy  such 
as  the  code  ordains  was  the  issue  of  the  religious  revolution 
wrought  in  Ezra's  time.  To  put  it  differently,  the  so-called 
Book  of  the  Covenant,  the  nucleus  of  the  law-giving,  itself 
implies  the  multiplicity  of  the  places  of  worship.  Deutero- 
nomy demands  the  centralisation  of  the  worship  as  something 
which  is  yet  to  take  place.  The  priestly  Code  declares  that 
the  limitation  of  worship  to  one  place  was  a  fact  already  in 
the  time  of  the  journeys  of  Israel  in  the  wilderness.  It  is 
assumed  that  the  Hebrews  in  the  time  of  Moses  shared  the 
almost  universal  worship  of  the  stars.  Moses  may  indeed 
have  concluded  a  covenant  between  his  people  and  Jahve, 
their  God,  hallowing  the  judicial  and  moral  life  of  the  people, 
bringing  these  into  relation  to  the  divine  will.  Jahve  was  a 
holy  God  whose  will  was  to  guide  the  people  coming  up  out 
of  the  degradation  of  nature- worship.  That  part  of  the  people 
held  to  the  old  nature- worship  is  evident  in  the  time  of  Elijah. 
The  history  of  Israel  is  not  that  of  defection  from  a  pure 
revelation.  It  is  the  history  of  a  gradual  attainment  of  purer 
revelation,  of  enlargement  in  the  application  of  it,  of  discovery 
of  new  principles  contained  in  it.  It  is  the  history  also  of 
the  decline  of  spiritual  religion.  The  zeal  of  the  prophets 
against  the  ceremonial  worship  shows  that.  Their  protest 
reveals  at  that  early  date  the  beginning  of  that  antithesis 
which  had  become  so  sharp  in  Jesus'  time. 

This  determination  of  the  relative  positions  of  law  and 
prophets  was  the  first  step  in  the  reconstruction  of  the 
history,  both  of  the  nation  of  Israel  and  of  its  literature. 
At  the  beginning,  as  in  every  literature,  are  songs  of  war 
and  victory,  of  praise  and  grief,  hymns,  even  riddles  and 
phrases  of  magic.  Everywhere  poetry  precedes  prose.  Then 
come  myths  relating  to  the  worsh'p  and  tales  of  the  fathers 
and  heroes.  Elements  of  both  these  sorts  are  embedded  in 
the  simple  chronicles  which  began  now  to  be  written,  primi- 
tive historical  works,    such    as    those  of   the  Jahvist    and 


IV.]        THE  CRITICAL  AND  HISTORICAL  MOVEMENT        135 

Elohist,  of  the  narrators  of  the  deeds  of  the  judges  and  of 
David  and  of  Saul.  Perhaps  at  this  point  belong  the 
earliest  attempts  at  fixing  the  tradition  of  family  and  clan 
rights,  and  of  the  regulation  of  personal  conduct,  as  in  the  / 
Book  of  the  Covenant.  Then  comes  the  great  outburst  I 
of  the  prophetic  spirit,  the  preaching  of  an  age  of  great 
religious  revival.  Then  follows  the  law,  with  its  minute  regu- 
lation of  all  details  of  life  upon  which  would  depend  the 
favour  of  the  God  who  had  brought  punishment  upon  the 
people  in  the  exile.  The  prophecy  runs  on  into  apocalyptic 
like  that  of  the  book  of  Daniel.  The  contact  with  the 
outside  world  makes  possible  a  phase  of  literature  such  as 
that  to  which  the  books  of  Job  and  Eccle^astes  belong.  The 
deepening  of  the  inner  life  gave  the  world  the  lyric  of  the 
Psalms,  some  of  which  are  credibly  assigned  to  a  period  so 
late  as  that  of  the  Maccabees. 

In  this  which  has  been  said  of  the  literature  we  have  the  clue 
also  for  the  reconstruction  of  the  nation's  history.  The  naive 
assumption  in  the  writing  of  all  history  had  once  been  that 
one  must  begin  with  the  beginning.  But  to  Wellhausen,/ 
Stade,  Eduard  Meyer  and  Kittel  and  Cornill,  it  has  been  clear* 
that  the  history  of  the  earliest  times  is  the  most  uncertain.^ 
It  is  the  least  adapted  to  furnish  a  secure  point  of  departure 
for  historical  inquiry.  There  exist  for  it  usually  no  con- 
temporary authorities,  or  only  such  as  are  of  problematical 
worth.  This  earliest  period  constitutes  a  problem,  the  solution 
of  which,  so  far  as  any  solution  is  possible,  can  be  hoped  for 
only  through  approach  from  the  side  of  ascertained  facts.  We 
must  start  from  a  period  which  is  historically  known.  For 
the  history  of  the  Hebrews,  this  is  the  time  of  the  first  prophets 
of  whom  we  have  written '  records,  or  from  whom  we  have 
written  prophecies.  We  get  from  these,  as  also  from  the 
earliest  direct  attempts  at  history  wTiting,  only  that  conception 
of  Israel's  pre-historic  life  which  was  entertained  in  prophetic 
circles  in  the  eighth  century.  We  learn  the  heroic  legends  in 
the  interpretation  which  the  prophets  put  upon  them.  We 
have  still  to  seek  to  interpret  them  for  ourselves.  We 
must  begin  in  the  middle    and  work   both   backward  and 


136    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

forward.  Such  a  view  of  the  history  of  Israel  affords  every 
opportunity  for  the  connecting  of  the  history  and  rehgion 
of  Israel  with  those  of  the  other  Semite  stocks.  Some  of  these 
have  in  recent  years  been  discovered  to  offer  extraordinary 
parallels  to  that  which  the  Old  Testament  relates. 

The  History  of  Doctrine 

When  speaking  of  Baur's  contribution  to  New  Testament 
criticism,  we  alluded  to  his  historical  works.  He  was  in  a  dis- 
tinct sense  a  reformer  of  the  method  of  the  writing  of  church 
history.  To  us  the  notions  of  the  historical  and  of  that  which 
is  genetic  are  identical.  Of  course,  naive  religious  chronicles 
do  not  meet  that  test.  A  glance  at  the  histories  produced 
by  the  age  of  rationalism  will  show  that  these  also  fall  short 
of  it.  The  perception  of  the  relativity  of  institutions  like  the 
papacy  is  here  wholly  wanting.  Men  and  things  are  brought 
summarily  to  the  bar  of  the  wisdom  of  the  author's  year  of 
grace.  They  are  approved  or  condemned  by  this  criterion. 
For  Baur,  all  things  had  come  to  pass  in  the  process  of  the  \ 
great  life  of  the  world.  There  must  have  been  a  rationale  J 
of  their  becoming.  It  is  for  the  historian  with  sympathy  and 
imagination  to  find  out  what  their  inherent  reason  was.  One 
other  thing  distinguishes  Baur  as  church  historian  from  his 
predecessors.  He  realised  that  before  one  can  delineate  one 
must  investigate.  One  must  go  to  the  sources.  One  must! 
estimate  the  value  of  these  sources.  One  must  have  ground 
in  the  sources  for  every  judgment.  Baur  was  himself  a  great 
investigator.  Yet  the  movement  for  the  investigation  of  the 
sources  of  biblical  and  ecclesiastical  history  which  his  genera- 
tion initiated  has  gone  on  to  such  achievements  that,  in  some 
respects,  we  can  but  view  the  foundations  of  Baur's  own  work 
as  precarious,  the  results  at  which  he  arrived  as  unwarranted. 
New  documents  have  come  to  light  since  his  day.  Forgeries 
have  been  proved  to  be  such.  The  whole  state  of  learning 
as  to  the  literature  of  the  Christian  origins  has  been  vastly 
changed.  There  is  still  one  other  thing  to  say  concerning  . 
Baur.     He  was  a  Hegelian.     He  has  the  disposition  always 


IV.]        THE  CRITICAL  AND  HISTORICAL  MOVEMENT        137 

to  interpret  the  movements  of  the  reHgious  spirit  in  the  sense! 
of  philosophical  ideas.  He  frankly  says  that  without  specu-j 
lation  every  historical  investigation  remains  but  a  play  upon 
the  surface  of  things.  Baur's  fault  was  that  in  his  search  for, 
or  rather  in  his  confident  discovery  of,  the  great  coimecting 
forces  of  history,  the  biographical  element,  the  significance 
of  personality,  threatened  altogether  to  disappear.  The  force 
in  the  history  was  the  absolute,^  the  immanent  divine  will./ 
The  method  everywhere  was  that  of  advance  by  contrasts' 
and  antagonisms.  One  gets  an  impression,  for  example, 
that  the  Nicene  dogma  became  what  it  did  by  the  might  of 
the  idea,  that  it  could  not  by  any  possibility  have  had  any 
other  issue. 

The  foil  to  much  of  this  in  Baur's  own  age  was  represented  \ 
in  the  work  of  Neander,  a  converted  Jew,  professor  of  church/  \ 
history  in  Berhn,  who  exerted  great  influence  upon  a  genera- 
tion of  English  and  American  scholars.  He  was  not  an  inves- 
tigator of  sources.  He  had  no  talent  for  the  task.  He  was 
a  delineator,  one  of  the  last  of  the  great  painters  of  history, 
if  one  may  so  describe  the  type.  He  had  imagination,  sym-j 
pathy,  a  devout  spirit.  His  great  trait  was  his  insight  into ' 
personality.  He  wrote  history  with  the  biographical  interest.] 
He  almost  resolves  history  into  a  series  of  biographical  tj^es. 
He  has  too  little  sense  for  the  connexion  of  things,  for 
the  laws  of  the  evolution  of  the  religious  spirit.  The  great 
dramatic  elements  tend  to  disappear  behind  the  emotions  of 
individuals.  The  old  dehneators  were  before  the  age  of  in- 
vestigation. Since  that  impulse  became  masterful,  some 
historians  have  been  completely  absorbed  in  the  effort  to 
make  contribution  to  this  investigation.  Others,  with  a 
sense  of  the  impossibility  of  mastering  the  results  of  investi- 
gation in  all  fields,  have  lost  the  zeal  for  the  writing  of  church 
history  on  a  great  scale.  They  have  contented  themselves 
with  producing  monographs  upon  some  particular  subject, 
in  which,  at  the  most,  they  may  hope  to  embody  all  that  is 
known  as  to  some  specific  question. 

We  spoke  above  of  the  new  conception  of  the  relation  of 
the  canonical  literature  of  the  New  Testament  to  the  extra- 


138    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

canonical.     We  alluded  to  the  new  sense  of  the  continuity  of 
the  history  of  the  apostolic  churches  with  that  of  the  Church 
of  the  succeeding  age.     The  influence  of  these  ideas  has  been 
to  set  all  problems  here  involved  in  a  new  light.     Until  1886 1 
it  might  have  been  said  with  truth  that  we  had  no  good  history  \ 
of  the  apostolic  age.     In  that  year  Weizsacker's  book,  Das 
ApostoUsche  Zeitalter  der  Christlichen  Kir  die,  admirably  filled 
the  place.  A  part  of  the  problem  of  the  historian  of  the  apostolic 
age  is  difficult  for  the  same  reason  which  was  given  when  we 
were  speaking  of  the  biography  of  Jesus.     Our  materials  are 
inadequate.     First  with  the  beginning  of  the  activities  of  Paul 
have  we  sources  of  the  first  rank.     The  relation  of  statements 
in  the  Pauline  letters  to  data  in  the  book  of  the  Acts  was  one 
of  the  earliest  problems  which  the  Tiibingen  school  set  itself. 
An  attempt  to  write  the  biography  of  Paul  reminds  us  sharply 
of  our  limitations.     We  know  almost  nothing  of  Paul  prior    . 
to  his  conversion,  or  subsequent  to  the  enigmatical  breaking  . 
off  of  the  account  of  the  beginnings  of  his  work  at  Rome. /' 
Harnack's  Mission  und  Aushreitung  des  Christenthums,  1902/ 
(translated,  Moffatt,  1908),  takes  up  the  work  of  Paul's  suc- 
cessors in  that  cardinal  activity.     It  offers,  strange  as  it  may 
seem,  the  first  discussion  of  the  dissemination  of  Christianity 
which  has  dealt  adequately  with  the  sources.     It  gives  also  a 
picture  of  the  world  into  which  the  Christian  movement  went.  \ 
It  emphasises  anew  the  truth  which  has  for  a  generation  past 
grown  in  men's  apprehension  that  there  is  no  possibility  of  1 
understanding  Christianity,  except  against  the  background  of  I 
the  religious  life  and  thought  of  the  world  into  which  it  came. 
Christianity  had  vital  relation,  at  every  step  of  its  progress, 
to   the   religious   movements   and  impulses   of   the   ancient 
world,  especially  in  those  centres  of  civilisation  which  Paul 
singled  out  for  his  endeavour  and  which  remained  the  centres 
of  the  Christian  growth.     It  was  an  age  which  has  often  been 
summarily  described  as  corrupt.     Despite  its  corruption,  or 
possibly  because  it  was  corrupt,  it  gives  evidence,  however, 
of  religious  stirring,  of  strong   ethical  reaction,  of  spiritual 
endeavour     rarely     paralleled.      In      the     Roman     Empire 
everything    travelled.     Religions   travelled.     In   the   centres] 


IV.]        THE  CRITICAL  AND  HISTORICAL  MOVEMENT        139 

of  civilisation  there  was  scarcely  a  faith  of  mankind  which 
had  not  its  votaries. 

It  was  an  age  of  religious  syncretism,  of  hospitality  to  diverse 
religious  ideas,  of  the  commingling  of  those  ideas.  These 
things  facilitated  the  progress  of  Christianity.  They  made 
certain  that  if  the  Christian  movement  had  in  it  the  divine 
vitality  which  men  claimed,  it  would  one  day  conquer  the 
world.  Equally,  they  made  certain  that,  as  the  very  condition 
of  this  conquest,  Christianity  would  be  itself  transformed. 
This  it  is  which  has  happened  in  the  evolution  of  Christianity 
from  its  very  earliest  stages  and  in  all  phases  of  its  life.  Of 
any  given  rite,  opinion  or  institution,  of  the  many  which  have 
passed  for  almost  two  millenniums  unchallenged  under  the 
Christian  name,  men  about  us  are  now  asking  :  But  how 
much  of  it  is  Christian  ?  In  what  measure  have  we  to  think 
of  it  as  derived  from  some  other  source,  and  representing 
the  accommodation  and  assimilation  of  Christianity  to  its 
environment  in  process  of  its  work  ?  What  is  Christianity  ? 
Not  unnaturally  the  ancient  Church  looked  with  satisfaction 
upon  the  great  change  which  passed  over  Christianity  when 
Constantine  suddenly  made  that  which  had  been  the  faith  of 
a  despised  and  persecuted  sect,  the  religion  of  the  world.  The 
Fathers  can  have  thought  thus  only  because  their  minds 
rested  upon  that  which  was  outward  and  spectacular.  Not 
unnaturally  the  metamorphosis  in  the  inward  nature  of 
Christianity  which  had  taken  place  a  century  and  a  quarter 
earlier  was  hidden  from  their  eyes.  In  truth,  by  that  earlier 
and  subtler  transformation  Christianity  had  passed  per- 
manently beyond  the  stage  in  which  it  had  been  prepon- 
derantly a  moral  and  spiritual  enthusiasm,  with  its  centre 
and  authority  in  the  person  of  Jesus.  It  became  a  system 
and  an  institution,  with  a  canon  of  New  Testament  Scripture, 
a  monarchical  organisation  and  a  rule  of  faith  which  was 
formulated  in  the  Apostles'  Creed. 

To  Baur  the  truth  as  to  the  conflict  of  Paul  with  the 
Judaisers  had  meant  much.  He  thought,  therefore,  with 
reference  to  the  rise  of  priesthood  and  ritual  among  the 
Christians,  to  the  emphasis  on  Scripture  in  the  fashion  of  the 


140    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

scribes,  to  the  insistance  upon  rules  and  dogmas  after  the  \ 
manner  of  the  Pharisees,  that  they  were  but  the  evidence/ 
of  the  dechne  and  defeat  of  Paul's  free  spirit  and  of  the^ 
resurgence  of  Judaism  in  Christianity.     He  sought  to  explains 
the   rise   of   the   episcopal  organisation   by  the  example   of 
the  synagogue.     Ritschl  in  his  Entstehung  der  alt-catholiscken 
Kirche,   1857,  had    seen    that    Baur's    theory  could  not  be  i 
true.      Christianity   did   not   fall    back   into   Judaism.      It 
went  forward  to  embrace  the  Hellenic  and  Roman  world. 
The  institutions,  dogmas,  practices  of  that  which,  after  a.d. 
200,  may  with  propriety  be  called  the  Catholic  Church,  are  1 
the  fruit  of  that  embrace.      There  was  here  a  falling  off  1 
from  primitive  and  spiritual  Christianity.     But  it  was  not  a 
falling  back  into  Judaism.     There  were  priests  and  scribes 
and  Pharisees  with  other  names  elsewhere.     The  phenomenon 
of   the  waning   of   the   original   enthusiasm   of   a  period  of 
religious  revelation  has  been  a  frequent  one.     Christianity  on 
a  grand  scale  illustrated  this  phenomenon  anew.     Hamack 
has  elaborated  this  thesis  with  unexampled  brilliancy  and 
power.     He  has  supported  it  with  a  learning  in  which  he  has 
no  rival  and  with  a  religious  interest  which  not  even  hostile 
critics  would  deny.     The  phrase,  '  the  Hellenisation  of  Chris- 
tianity,' might  almost  be  taken  as  the  motto  of  the  work  to 
which  he  owes  his  fame. 

Harnack 

Adolf  Harnack  was  bom  in  1851  in  Dorpat,  in  one  of  the 
Baltic  provinces  of  Russia.     His  father,  Theodosius  Harnack, 
was  professor  of  pastoral  theology  in  the  University  of  Dorpat. » 
Hamack  studied  in  Leipzig  and  began  to  teach  there  in  1874.1' 
He  was  called  to  the  chair  of  church  history  in  Giessen  in  1879. ' 
In    1886    he  removed  to  Marburg  and  in   1889  to  Berlin. 
Harnack's  earlier  published  work  was  almost  entirely  in  the  i 
field  of  the  study  of  the  sources  and  materials  of  early  church  | 
history.     His  first  book,  pubhshed  in  1873,  was  an  inquiry  j 
as  to  the  sources  for  the  history  of  Gnosticism.     His  Patrum  I 
Apostolicorum  Opera,   1876,  prepared    by  him  jointly   with 


IV.]        THE  CRITICAL  AND  HISTORICAL  MOVEMENT        141 

von  Gebhardt  and  Zahn,  was  in  a  way  only  a  forecast  of  the 
great  collection,  Texte  und  Untersuchungen  zur  Geschichte  der 
alt-christlichen  Literatur,  begun  in  1882,  upon  which  numbers 
of  scholars  have  worked  together  with  him.  The  collection 
has  already  more  than  thirty-five  volumes.  In  his  own 
two  works,  Die  Geschichte  der  alt-christlichen  Literatur  his 
Eusebitis,  1893,  and  Die  Chronologic  der  alt-christlichen 
Literatur  bis  Eusebius,  1897,  are  deposited  the  results  of 
his  reflexion  on  the  mass  of  this  material.  His  Beitrdge  zur 
Einleitung  in  das  Neue  Testament,  1906,  etc.,  should  not  be  over- 
looked. He  has  had  the  good  fortune  to  be  among  those  who 
have  discovered  manuscripts  of  importance.  He  has  had 
to  do  with  the  Prussian  Academy's  edition  of  the  Greek 
Fathers.  A  list  of  his  published  works,  which  was  prepared 
in  connexion  with  the  celebration  of  his  sixtieth  birthday  in 
1911,  bears  witness  to  his  amazing  diligence  and  fertility. 
He  w^as  for  thirty-five  years  associated  with  Schiirer  in  the 
publication  of  the  Theoldgische  Literaturzeitung .  He  has 
filled  important  posts  in  the  Church  and  under  the  govern- 
ment. To  this  must  be  added  an  activity  as  a  teacher  which 
has  placed  a  whole  generation  of  students  from  every  portion 
of  the  world  under  undying  obligation.  One  speaks  with 
reserve  of  the  living,  but  surely  no  man  of  our  generation  has 
done  more  to  make  the  history  of  which  we  write. 

Harnack's  epoch-making  work  was  his  Lehrbuch  der  Dog- 
mengeschichte,  1886-88,  fourth  edition,   1910.     The  book  met, 
almost  from  the  moment  of  its  appearance,  with  the  reahsa- 
tion  of  the  magnitude  of  that  which  had  been  achieved.     It 
rested  upon  a  fresh  and  independent  study  of  the  sources. 
It  departed  from  the  mechanism  which  had  made  the  old  I 
treatises  upon   the   history  of  doctrine   formal  and  lifeless.  | 
Hamack  realised  to  the  full  how  many  influences  other  than| 
theological  had  had  part  in  the  development  of  doctrine.     He^ 
recognised  the  reaction  of  modes  of  life  and  practice,  and  of 
external  circumstances  on  the  history  of  thought.     His  history 
of  doctrine  has  thus  a   breadth  and   human  quality  never 
before  attained.     Philosophy,  worship,  morals,  the  develop-  ' 
ment  of  Church  government  and  of  the  canon,  the  common  | 


142    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

interests  and  passions  of  the  age  and  those  of  the  individual 
participants,  are  all  made  tributary  to  his  delineation. 

Hamack  cannot  share  Baur's  view  that  the  triumph  of  the 
Logos-Christology  at  Nicaea  and  Chalcedon  was  inevitable. 
A  certain  historic  naturalness  of  the  movement  he  would 
concede,  the  world  on  which  Christianity  entered  being  what 
it  was.  He  is  aware,  however,  that  many  elements  other 
than  Christian  have  entered  into  the  development.  He  has 
phrased  his  apprehension  thus.  That  Hellenisation  of  Chris- 
tianity which  Gnosticism  represented,  and  against  which,  in 
this,  its  acute  form,  the  Church  contended  was,  after  all,  the 
same  thing  which,  by  slower  process  and  more  unconsciously, 
befell  the  Church  itself.  That  pure  moral  enthusiasm  and 
inspiration  which  had  been  the  gist  of  the  Christian  move- 
ment, in  its  endeavour  to  appropriate  the  world,  had  been 
appropriated  by  the  world  in  far  greater  measure  than  its 
adherents  knew.  It  had  taken  up  its  mission  to  change  the 
world.  It  had  dreamed  that  while  changing  the  world  it  had 
itself  remained  unchanged.  The  world  was  changed,  the 
world  of  life,  of  feeling  and  of  thought.  But  Christianity 
was  also  changed.  It  had  conquered  the  world.  It  had  no 
perception  of  the  fact  that  it  illustrated  the  old  law  that  the 
conquered  give  laws  to  the  conquerors.  It  had  fused  the 
ancient  culture  with  the  flame  of  its  inspiration.  It  did  not 
appreciate  the  degree  in  which  the  elements  of  that  ancient 
culture  now  coloured  its  far-shining  flame.  It  had  been  a 
maker  of  history.  Meantime  it  had  been  unmade  and  remade 
by  its  own  history.  It  confidently  carried  back  its  canon, 
dogma,  organisation,  ritual  to  Christ  and  the  apostles.  It 
did  not  realise  that  the  very  fact  that  it  could  find  these  things 
natural  and  declare  them  ancient,  proved  with  conclusiveness 
that  it  had  itself  departed  from  the  standard  of  Christ  and 
the  apostles.  It  esteemed  that  these  were  its  defences  against 
the  world.  It  little  dreamed  that  they  were,  by  their  very 
existence,  the  evidence  of  the  fact  that  the  Church  had  not 
defended  itself  against  the  world.  Its  dogma  was  the  Helleni- 
sation of  its  thought.  Its  organisation  was  the  Romanising  of 
its  life.     Its  canon  and  ritual   were   the  externalising,  and 


IV.]        THE  CRITICAL  AND  HISTORICAL  MOVEMENT        143 

conventionalising  of  its  spirit  and  enthusiasm.  These  are 
positive  and  constructive  statements  of  Harnack's  main 
position. 

\Vhen, however,  they  are  turned  about  and  stated  negatively, 
these  statements  all  convey,  more  or  less,  the  impression 
that  the  advance  of  Christianity  had  been  its  destruction,  and 
the  evolution  of  dogma  had  been  a  defection  from  Christ.  This 
is  the  aspect  of  the  contention  which  gave  hostile  critics 
opportunity  to  say  that  we  have  before  us  the  history  of  the 
loss  of  Christianity.  Hamack  himself  has  many  sentences 
which  superficially  will  bear  that  construction.  Hatch  had 
said  in  his  brilliant  book.  The  Influence  of  Greek  Ideas  and 
Usages  upon  the  Christian  Church,  1891,  that  the  domestication 
of  Greek  philosophy  in  the  Church  signified  a  defection  from 
the  Sermon  on  the  Mount.  The  centre  of  gravity  of  the 
Gospel  was  changed  from  life  to  doctrine,  from  morals  to 
metaphysics,  from  goodness  to  orthodoxy.  The  change  was 
portentous.  The  aspect  of  pessimism  is,  however,  removed 
when  one  recogm'ses  the  inevitableness  of  some  such  process, 
if  Christianity  was  ever  to  wield  an  influence  in  the  world 
at  all.  Again,  one  must  consider  that  the  process  of  the 
recovery  of  pure  Christianity  must  begin  at  exactly  this  point, 
namely,  with  the  recognition  of  how  much  in  current  Chris- 
tianity is  extraneous.  It  must  begin  with  the  sloughing  off 
of  these  extraneous  elements,  with  the  recovery  of  the  sense 
for  that  which  original  Christianity  was.  Such  a  recovery 
would  be  the  setting  free  again  of  the  power  of  the  religion 
itself. 

The  constant  touchstone  and  point  of  reference  for  everj^ 
stage  of  the  history  of  the  Church  must  be  the  gospel  of  Jesus. 
But  what  was  the  gospel  of  Jesus  ?  In  what  way  did  the 
very  earliest  Christians  apprehend  that  gospel  ?  This  ques- 
tion is  far  more  difficult  for  us  to  answer  than  it  was  for  those 
to  whom  the  New  Testament  was  a  closed  body  of  literature, 
externally  differentiated  from  all  other,  and  with  a  miraculous 
inspiration  extending  uniformly  to  every  phrase  in  any  book. 
These  men  would  have  said  that  they  had  but  to  find  the 
proper  combination  of  the  sacred  phrases.     But  we  acknow- 


144    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

ledge  that  the  central  inspiration  was  the  personaHty  of  Jesus. 
The  books  possess  this  inspiration  in  varying  degree.  Certain 
of  the  books  have  distinctly  begun  the  fusion  of  Christian  with 
other  elements.  They  themselves  represent  the  first  stages 
of  the  history  of  doctrine.  We  acknowledge  that  those 
utterances  of  Jesus  which  have  been  preserved  for  us,  shaped 
themselves  by  the  antitheses  in  which  Jesus  stood.  There 
is  much  about  them  that  is  palpably  incidental,  practically 
relevant  and  unquestionably  only  relative.  In  a  large  sense, 
much  of  the  meaning  of  the  gospel  has  to  be  gathered  out  of 
the  evidence  of  the  operation  of  its  spirit  in  subsequent  ages 
of  the  Christian  Church,  and  from  remoter  aspects  of  the 
influence  of  Jesus  on  the  world.  Thus  the  very  conception 
of  the  gospel  of  Jesus  becomes  inevitably  more  or  less  sub- 
jective. It  becomes  an  ideal  construction.  The  identification 
of  this  ideal  with  the  original  gospel  proclamation  becomes 
precarious.  We  seem  to  move  in  a  circle.  We  derive  the 
ideal  from  the  history,  and  then  judge  the  history  by  the  ideal. 
Is  there  any  escape  from  this  situation,  short  of  the  return 
to  the  authority  of  Church  or  Scripture  in  the  ancient  sense  ? 
Furthermore,  even  the  men  to  whom  the  gospel  was  in  the 
strictest  sense  a  letter,  identified  the  gospel  with  their  own 
private  interpretation  of  this  letter.  Certainly  the  followers 
of  Ritschl  who  will  acknowledge  no  traits  of  the  gospel  save 
those  of  which  they  find  direct  witness  in  the  Gospels,  thus 
ignore  that  the  Gospels  are  themselves  interpretations.  This 
undue  stress  upon  the  documents  which  we  are  fortunate 
enough  to  possess,  makes  us  forget  the  limitations  of  these 
documents.  We  tend  thus  to  exaggerate  that  which  must 
be  only  incidental,  as,  for  example,  the  Jewish  element,  in 
the  teaching  of  Jesus.  We  thus  underrate  phases  of  Jesus' 
teaching  which,  no  doubt,  a  man  like  Paul  would  have  appre- 
hended better  than  did  the  evangelists  themselves.  In  truth, 
in  Harnack's  own  delineation  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus,  those 
elements  of  it  which  found  their  way  to  expression  in  Paul,  or 
again  in  the  fourth  Gospel,  are  rather  underrated  than  over- 
stated, in  the  author's  anxiety  to  exclude  elements  which  are 
acknowledged  to  be  interpretative  in  their  nature.     We  are 


IV.]        THE  CRITICAL  AND  HISTORICAL  MOVEMENT        145 

driven,  in  some  measure,  to  seek  to  find  out  what  the  gospel 
was  from  the  way  in  Avhich  the  earhest  Christians  took  it  up. 
We  return  ever  afresh  to  questions  nearly  unanswerable  from 
the  materials  at  hand.  What  was  the  central  principle  in  the 
shaping  of  the  earliest  stages  of  the  new  community,  both 
as  to  its  thought  and  life  ?  Was  it  the  longing  for  the  coming 
of  the  Kingdom  of  God,  the  striving  after  the  righteousness 
of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  ?  Or  was  it  the  faith  of  the 
Messiah,  the  reverence  for  the  Messiah,  directed  to  the  person 
of  Jesus  ?  What  word  dominated  the  preaching  ?  W^as  it 
that  the  Kingdom  of  God  was  near,  that  the  Son  of  Man 
would  come  ?  Or  was  it  that  in  Jesus  Messiah  has  come  ? 
What  was  the  demand  upon  the  hearer  ?  Was  it.  Repent,  * 
or  was  it,  Believe  on  the  Lord  Jesus,  or  was  it  both,  and 
which  had  the  greater  emphasis  ?  Was  the  name  of  Jesus  i 
used  in  the  formulas  of  worship  before  the  time  of  Paul  ?J 
What  do  we  know  about  prayer  in  the  name  of  Jesus,  or 
baptism  in  that  name,  or  miracles  in  the  name  of  Jesus, 
or  of  the  Lord's  Supper  and  the  conception  of  the  Lord  as 
present  with  his  disciples  in  the  rite  ?  Was  this  revering  of 
Jesus,  which  was  fast  moving  toward  a  worship  of  him,  the 
inner  motive  force  of  the  whole  construction  of  the  dogma 
of  his  person  and  of  the  trinity  ? 

In  the  second  volume  Harnack  treats  of  the  development 
primarily  of  the  Christological  and  trinitarian  dogma,  from  ,| 
the  fourth  to  the  seventh  centuries.     The  dramatic  interest 
of  the  narrative  exceeds  anything  which  has  been  written^ 
on  this  theme.     A  debate  which  to   most  modern    men  is, 
remote  and  abstruse  almost  to  the  point  of  unintelligibility,| 
and  of  which  many  of  the  external  aspects  are  disheartening 
in  the  extreme,  is  here  brought  before  us  in  something  of  the  j 
reasonableness  which  it  must  have  had  for  those  who  took ' 
part  in  it.     Tertullian  shaped  the  problem  and  established 
the  nomenclature  for  the  Christological  solution  which  the 
Orient  two  hundred  years  later  made  its  own.     It  was  he 
who,  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  Jurist,  rather  than  of  the  \ 
philosopher,  gave  the  words  '  person '  and  *  substance,'  which  I 
continually  occur  in  this  discussion,  the  meaning  which  in  the 

K 


146    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [cm 

Nicene  Creed  they  bear.  Most  brilliant  is  Harnack's  charac- 
terisation of  Arius  and  Athanasius.  In  Arius  the  notion  of  j 
the  Son  of  God  is  altogether  done  away.  Only  the  name^ 
remains.  Tlie  victory  of  Arianism  would  have  resolved  t 
Christianity  into  cosmology  and  formal  ethics.  It  would  have 
destroyed  it  as  religion.  Yet  the  perverse  situation  into 
which  the  long  and  fierce  controversy  had  drifted  cannot  be 
better  illustrated  than  by  one  undisputed  fact.  Athanasius, 
who  assured  for  Christianity  its  character  as  a  religion  of  the 
living  communion  of  God  with  man,  is  yet  the  theologian  in 
whose  Christology  almost  every  possible  trace  of  the  recol-/ 
lection  of  the  historic  Jesus  has  disappeared.  The  purpose  of 
the  redemption  is  to  bring  men  into  community  of  life  with 
God.  But  Athanasius  apprehended  this  redemption  as  a  con- 
ferment, from  without  and  from  above,  of  a  divine  nature. 
He  subordinated  everything  to  this  idea.  The  whole  narra- 
tive concerning  Jesus  falls  under  the  interpretation  that  the 
only  quality  requisite  for  the  Redeemer  in  his  work  was  the 
possession  in  all  fulness  of  the  divine  nature.  His  incarnation, 
his  manifestation  in  real  human  life,  held  fast  to  in  word,  is 
reduced  to  a  mere  semblance.  Salvation  is  not  an  ethical  j 
process,  but  a  miraculous  bestowment.  The  Christ,  who  1 
was  God,  lifts  men  up  to  godhood.  They  become  God. 
These  phrases  are  of  course  capable  of  ethical  and  intelligible 
meaning.  The  development  of  the  doctrine,  however,  threw 
the  emphasis  upon  the  metaphysical  and  miraculous  aspects 
of  the  work.  It  gloried  in  the  fact  that  the  presence  of  divine 
and  human,  two  natures  in  one  person  forever,  was  unin- 
telligible. In  the  end  it  came  to  the  pass  that  the  enthusiastic 
assent  to  that  which  defied  explanation  became  the  very 
mark  of  a  humble  and  submissive  faith.  One  reads  the 
so-called  Athanasian  Creed,  and  hears  the  ring  of  its  deter- 
mination to  exact  assent.  It  had  long  since  been  clear  to 
these  Catholics  and  churchmen  that,  with  the  mere  authority 
of  Scripture,  it  was  not  possible  to  defend  Christianity  against 
the  heretics.  The  heretics  read  their  heresies  out  of  the 
Bible.  The  orthodox  read  orthodoxy  from  the  same  page. 
Marcion  had  proved  that,  in  the  very  days  when  the  canon 


IV.]        THE  CRITICAL  AND  HISTORICAL  MOVEMENT        147 

took  its  shape.  There  must  be  an  authority  to  define  the 
interpretation  of  the  Scripture.  Those  who  would  share 
the  benefits  which  the  Church  dispensed  must  assent  uncon- 
ditionally to  the  terms  of  membership. 

All  these  questions  were  veiled  for  the  early  Christians 
behind  the  question  of  the  kind  of  Christ  in  whom  their  hearts 
believed.  With  all  that  we  have  said  about  the  reprehensible 
admixture  of  the  metaphysical  element  in  the  dogma,  with 
all  the  accusation  which  w^e  bring  concerning  acute  or  gradual 
Hellenisation,  secularisation  and  defection  from  the  Christ, 
we  ought  not  to  hide  from  ourselves  that  in  this  gigantic 
struggle  there  were  real  religious  interests  at  stake,  and  that 
for  the  men  of  both  parties.  Dimly,  or  perhaps  vividly, 
the  man  of  either  party  felt  that  the  conception  of  the 
Christ  which  he  was  fighting  for  was  congruous  with  the 
conception  of  rehgion  which  he  had,  or  felt  that  he  must 
have.  It  is  this  religious  issue,  everywhere  present,  which 
gives  dignity  to  a  struggle  which  otherwise  does  often  sadly 
lack  it.  There  are  two  religious  views  of  the  person  of 
Christ  which  have  stood,  from  the  beginning,  the  one  over 
against  the  other.  ^  The  one  saw  in  Jesus  of  Nazareth  a 
man,  distinguished  by  his  special  calling  as  the  Messianic 
King,  endued  with  special  powers,  lifted  above  all  men 
ever  known,  yet  a  man,  completely  subject  to  God  in  faith, 
obedience  and  prayer.  This  view  is  surely  sustained  by 
many  of  Jesus'  own  words  and  deeds.  It  shines  through 
the  testimony  of  the  men  who  followed  him.  Even  the 
belief  in  his  resurrection  and  his  second  coming  did  not 
altogether  do  away  with  it.  The  other  view  saw  in  him 
a  new  God  who,  descending  from  God,  brought  mysterious 
powers  for  the  redemption  of  mankind  into  the  world,  and 
after  short  obscuring  of  his  glory,  returned  to  the  abode 
of  God,  where  he  had  been  before.  From  this  belief  come 
all  the  hymns  and  prayers  to  Jesus  as  to  God  all  miracles 
and  exorcisms  in  his  name. 

In  the  long  run,  the  simpler  view  did  not  maintain  itself. 
If   false  gods  and   demons   were   expelled,  it  was  the  God 

1  Wernle,  Einfdhrung  in  das  Theologische  Studium,  1908,  s.  204. 


148    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

Jesus  who  expelled  them.  The  more  modest  faith  believed 
that  in  the  man  Jesus,  being  such  an  one  as  he  was,  men  had 
received  the  greatest  gift  which  the  love  of  God  had  to  bestow. 
In  turn  the  believer  felt  the  assurance  that  he  also  was  a 
child  of  God,  and  in  the  spirit  of  Jesus  was  to  realise  that 
sonship.  Syncretist  religions  suggested  other  thoughts.  We 
see  that  already  even  in  the  synoptic  tradition  the  calling 
upon  the  name  of  Jesus  had  found  place.  One  wonders 
whether  that  first  apprehension  ever  stood  alone  in  its 
purity.  The  Gentile  Churches  founded  by  Paul,  at  all  events, 
had  no  such  simple  trust.  Equally,  the  second  form  of  faith 
seems  never  to  have  been  able  to  stand  alone  in  its  peculiar 
quality.  Some  of  the  gnostic  sects  had  it.  Marcion  again 
is  our  example.  The  new  God  Jesus  had  nothing  to  do  with 
the  cruel  God  of  the  Old  Testament.  He  supplanted  the  old 
God  and  became  the  only  God.  In  the  Church  the  new  God, 
come  down  from  heaven,  must  be  set  in  relation  with  the  long- 
known  God  of  Israel.  No  less,  must  he  stand  in  relation 
to  the  simple  hero  of  the  Gospels  with  his  human  traits. 
The  problem  of  theological  reflexion  was  to  find  the  right 
middle  course,  to  keep  the  divine  Christ  in  harmony,  on 
the  one  side,  with  monotheism,  and  on  the  other,  with  the 
picture  which  the  Gospels  gave.  Belief  knew  nothing  of 
these  contradictions.  The  same  simple  soul  thanked  God 
for  Jesus  with  his  sorrows  and  his  sympathy,  as  man's  guide 
and  helper,  and  again  prayed  to  Jesus  because  he  seemed 
too  wonderful  to  be  a  man.  The  same  kind  of  faith  achieves 
the  same  wondering  and  touching  combination  to-day,  after 
two  thousand  years.  With  thought  comes  trouble.  Re- 
flexion wears  itself  out  upon  the  insoluble  difficulty,  the 
impossible  combination,  the  flat  contradiction,  which  the 
two  views  present,  so  soon  as  they  are  clearly  seen. 

In  the  earliest  Christian  writings  the  fruit  of  this  reflexion 
lies  before   us  in   this  form : — The  Creator  of  worlds,  the 
mediator,  the  lord   of  angels  and  demons,  the  Logos  which 
was  God  and  is  our  Saviour,  was  yet  a  humble  son  of  man,  ] 
undergoing  suffering  and  death,  having  laid  aside  his  divineJ 
glory.     This    picture    is    made    with    materials    which    the 


IV.]        THE  CRITICAL  AND  HISTORICAL  MOVEMENT        149 

canonical  writings  themselves  afford.     Theological  study  had 
henceforth  nothing  to  do  but  to  avoid  extremes  and  seek 
to   make   this   image,  which  reflexion  upon   two   polar  op- 
posites  had  yielded,  as  nearly  thinkable  as  possible.     It  has*) 
been  said  that  the  trinitarian  doctrine  is  not  in  the  New  / 
Testament,  that  it  was  later  elaborated  by  a  different  kind^ 
of  mind.     This  is  not  true.     But  the  inference  is  precisely' 
the  contrarj^  of  that  which  defenders  of  the  dogma  would 
formerly  have  drawn  from  this  concession.     The  same  kind 
of  mind,  or  rather  the  same  two  kinds  of  mind,  are  at  work 
in   the   New   Testament.     Both    of    the   religious    elements 
above    suggested    are    in   the    Gospels   and    Epistles.     The/ 
New  Testament   presents    attempts   at   their   combination.' 
Either  form  may   be  found  in  the  literature  of    the    later 
age.     If  we  ask  ourselves,  What   is   that  in  Jesus   which:  ; 
gives  us  the  sense  of  redemption,  surely  we  should  answer,  ' 
It  is  his  glad  and   confident  resting  in  the    love  of  God/ 
the   Father.     It   is   his   courage,   his   faith  in   men,   which' 
becomes  our  faith  in  ourselves.     It  is  his  wonderful  mingling ! 
of  purity  and  love  of  righteousness  with  love  of  those  who 
have  sinned.     You  may  find  this  in  the  ancient  literature, 
as  the  Fathers  describe  that  to  which  their  souls  cling.     But 
this  is  not  the  point  of  view  from  which  the  dogma  is  organised. 
The  Nicene  Christology  is  not  to  be  understood  from  this 
approach.     The  cry  of  a  dying  civilisation  after  power  and 
light   and   life,   the   feeling   that   these   might  come   to   it, 
streaming  dowTi   as  it  were,  from  above,  as  a  physical,  a 
mechanical,  a  magical  deliverance,  this  is  the  frame  within 
which  is  set  what  is  here  said  of  the  help  and  redemption 
wrought   by   Christ.     The  resurrection  and  the  incarnation 
are  the  points  at  which  this  streaming  in  of  the  divine  light 
and  power  upon  a  darkened  world  is  felt. 

That  religion  seemed  the  highest,  that  interpretation  of 
Christianity  the  truest,  the  absolute  one,  which  could  boast 
that  it  possessed  the  power    of    the  Almighty  through  his 
physical  union  with  men.     He  who  contended  that  Jesus  was/ 
God,  contended   therewith  for  a  power  which   could   come] 
upon  men  and  make  them  in  some  sense  one  with  God.     Thiay 


150    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 


'-■1 


is  the  view  which  has  been  almost  exclusively  held  in  the 
Greek  Church.  It  is  the  view  which  has  run  under  and 
through  and  around  the  other  conception  in  the  Roman  and 
Protestant  Churches.  The  sense  that  salvation  is  inward, 
moral,  spiritual,  has  rarely  indeed  been  absent  from  Christen 
dom.  It  would  be  preposterous  to  allege  that  it  had.  Yet 
this  sense  has  been  overlaid  and  underrun  and  shot  through 
with  that  other  and  disparate  idea  of  salvation,  as  of  a  pure  | 
bestowment,  something  achieved  apart  from  us,  or,  if  onej 
maj^  so  say,  some  alteration  of  ourselves  upon  other  than 
moral  and  spiritual  terms.  The  conception  of  the  person 
Christ  shows  the  same  uncertainty.  Or  rather,  with  a  given 
view  of  the  nature  of  religion  and  salvation,  the  corre- 
sponding view  of  Christ  is  certain.  In  the  age-long  and 
world-wide  contest  over  the  trinitarian  formula,  with  all 
that  is  saddening  in  the  struggle  and  all  that  was  mislead- 
ing in  the  issue,  it  is  because  we  see  men  struggling  to  come 
into  the  clear  as  to  these  two  meanings  of  religion,  that 
the  contest  has  such  absorbing  interest.  Men  have  been 
right  in  declining  to  call  that  religion  in  which  a  man  saves 
himself.  They  have  been  wrong  in  esteeming  that  they 
were  then  only  saved  of  God  or  Christ  when  they  were 
saved  by  an  obviously  external  process.  Even  this  antinomy 
is  softened  when  one  no  longer  holds  that  God  and  men  are 
mutually  exclusive  conceptions.  It  is  God  working  within 
us  who  saves,  the  God  who  in  Jesus  worked  such  a  wonder 
of  righteousness  and  love  as  else  the  world  has  never  seen. 


v.]  NATURAL  AND  SOCIAL  SCIENCES  151 


CHAPTER  V 

THE   CONTRIBUTION   OF  THE  NATURAL   AND  SOCIAL 

SCIENCES 

By  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  empirical  sciences 
had  undergone  vast  expansion  in  the  study  of  detail  and  in 
the  discovery  of  principles.     Men  felt  the  necessity  of  some 
adequate  discussion  of  the  relation  of  these  sciences  one  to , 
another  and  of  their  unity.     There  was  need  of  the  organisa-i 
tion  of  the  mass  of  knowledge,  largely  new  and  ever  increas- 
ing, which  the  sciences  furnished.     It  lay  in  the  logic  of  the 
case  that  some  of  these  attempts  should  advance  the  bold 
claim  to  deal  with  all  knowledge  whatsoever  and   to  offer 
a  theory  of  the  universe  as  a  whole.     Religion,  both  in  its 
mythological  and  in  its  theological  stages,  had  offered  a  theory 
of  the  universe  as  a  whole.     The  great  metaphysical  systems  | 
had  offered  theories  of  the  universe  as  a  whole.     Both  had 
professed  to  include  all  facts.     Notoriously  both  theology  and 
metaphysics  had  dealt  in  most  inadequate  fashion  with  the  \ 
material  world,  in  the  study  of  which  the  sciences  were  now  ' 
achieving  great  results.     Indeed,  the  methods  current  and 
authoritative    with    theologians    and    metaphysicians    had  ) 
actually  prevented  study  of  the  physical  universe.     Both  of/ 
these  had  invaded  areas  of  fact  to  which  their  methods  had 
no  application  and  uttered  dicta  which  had  no   relation  to 
truth.     The  very  life  of  the  sciences  depended  upon  deliverance 
from  this  bondage.     The  record  of  that  deliverance  is  one  of 
the  most  dramatic  chapters  in  the  history  of  thought.     Could 
one  be  surprised  if,  in  the  resentment  which  long  oppression 
had  engendered  and  in  the  joy  which  overwhelming  victory 
had  brought,  scientific  men  now  invaded  the  fields  of  their 
opponents  ?     They  repaid  their  enemies  in  their  own  coin. 


152     HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT   [ch. 

There  was  with  some  a  disposition  to  deny  that  there  exists 
an  area  of  knowledge  to  which  the  methods  of  metaphysicians/ 
and  theologians  might  apply.  This  was  Comte's  contention. j 
Others  conceded  that  there  might  be  such  an  area,  but  claimed 
that  we  can  have  no  knowledge  of  it.  Even  the  theologians,  / 
after  their  first  shock,  were  disposed  to  concede  that,  concern- 
ing the  magnitudes  in  which  they  were  most  interested,  as 
for  example,  God  and  soul,  we  have  no  knowledge  of  the  sort 
which  the  method  of  the  physical  sciences  would  give.  They 
fell  back  upon  Kant's  distinction  of  the  two  reasons  and  two  f 
worlds.  They  exaggerated  the  sharpness  of  that  distinction. 
They  learned  that  the  claim  of  agnosticism  was  capable  of 
being  viewed  as  a  line  of  defence,  behind  which  the  transcen- 
dental magnitudes  might  be  secure.  Indeed,  if  one  may  take 
Spencer  as  an  example,  it  is  not  certain  that  this  was  not 
the  intent  of  some  of  the  scientists  in  their  strong  assertion 
of  agnosticism.  Spencer's  later  work  reveals  that  he  had  no 
disposition  to  deny  that  there  are  foundations  for  belief  in 
a  world  lying  behind  the  phenomenal,  and  from  which  the 
latter  gets  its  meaning. 

Meantime,  after  positivism  was  buried  and  agnosticism 
dead,  a  thing  was  achieved  for  which  Comte  himself  laid 
the  foundation  and  in  which  Spencer  as  he  grew  older  was 
ever  more  deeply  interested.  This  was  the  great  develop-l 
ment  of  the  social  sciences.  Every  aspect  of  the  life  of  man,| 
including  religion  itself,  has  been  drawn  within  the  area  of  the 
social  sciences.  To  all  these  subjects,  including  religion,  there 
have  been  applied  empirical  methods  which  have  the  closest 
analogy  with  those  which  have  reigned  in  the  physical  sciences. 
Psychology  has  been  made  a  science  of  experiment,  and  the\ 
psychology  of  religion  has  been  given  a  place  within  the  area  ^ 
of  its  observations  and  generalisations.  The  ethical,  and 
again  the  religious  consciousness  has  been  subjected  to  the 
same  kind  of  investigation  to  which  all  other  aspects  of  con- 
sciousness are  subjected.  Effort  has  been  made  to  ascertain 
and  classify  the  phenomena  of  the  religious  life  of  the  race  in 
all  lands  and  in  all  ages.  A  science  of  religions  is  taking  ^ 
its  place   among    the   other   sciences.     It  is  as  purely   an 


v.]  NATURAL  AND  SOCIAL  SCIENCES  153 

inductive  science  as  is  any  other.     The  history  of  reHgions 
and  the  philosophy  of  reUgion  are  being  rewritten  from  this/ 
point  of  view. 

In  the  first  hnes  of  this  chapter  we  spoke  of  the  empirical 
sciences,  meaning  the  sciences  of  the  material  world.  It  is 
clear,  however,  that  the  sciences  of  mind,  of  morals  and  of  1 
religion  have  now  become  empirical  sciences.  They  have 
their  basis  in  experience,  the  experience  of  individuals  and, 
the  experience  of  masses  of  men,  of  ages  of  observable  human ' 
life.  They  all  proceed  by  the  method  of  observation  and 
inference,  of  hjrpothesis  and  verification.  There  is  a  unity 
of  method  as  between  the  natural  and  social  and  psychical 
sciences,  the  reach  of  which  is  startling  to  reflect  upon.  Indeed, 
the  physiological  aspects  of  psychology,  the  investigations  of 
the  relation  of  adolescence  to  conversion,  suggest  that  the  dis- 
tinction between  the  physical  and  the  psychical  is  a  vanishing 
distinction.  Science  comes  nearer  to  offering  an  interpretation 
of  the  universe  as  a  whole  than  the  opening  paragraphs  of  this 
chapter  would  imply.  But  it  does  so  by  including  religion, 
not  by  excluding  it.  No  one  would  any  longer  think  of  citing 
Kant's  distinction  of  two  reasons  and  two  worlds  in  the  sense 
of  estabhshing  a  city  of  refuge  into  which  the  persecuted 
might  flee.  Kant  rendered  incomparable  service  by  making 
clear  two  poles  of  thought.  Yet  we  must  realise  how  the 
space  between  is  filled  with  the  gradations  of  an  absolute 
continuity  of  activity.  Man  has  but  one  reason.  This  may 
conceivably  operate  upon  appropriate  material  in  one  or  the 
other  of  these  polar  fashions.  It  does  operate  in  infinite 
variations  of  degree,  in  unity  with  itself,  after  both  fashions, 
at  all  times  and  upon  all  materials. 

Positivism  was  a  system.  Agnosticism  was  at  least  a  phase 
of  thought.  The  broadening  of  the  conception  of  science 
and  the  invasion  of  every  area  of  life  by  a  science  thus  broadly 
conceived,  has  been  an  influence  less  tangible  than  those  others 
but  not,  therefore,  less  effective.  Positivism  was  bitterly\ 
hostile  to  Christianity,  though,  in  the  mind  of  Comte  himself  I 
and  of  a  few  others,  it  produced  a  curious  substitute,  possess- 1 
ing  many  of  the  marks  of  Roman  Catholicism.     The  name 


154    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

'  agnostic  '  was  so  loosely  used  that  one  must  say  that  the  con- 
tention was  hostile  to  religion  in  the  minds  of  some  and  not 
of  others.  The  new  movement  for  an  inclusive  science  is  not 
hostile  to  religion.  Yet  it  will  transform  current  conceptions 
of  religion  as  those  others  never  did.  In  proportion  as  it  is 
scientific  it  cannot  be  hostile.  It  may  at  most  be  indifferent. 
Nevertheless,  in  the  long  run,  few  will  choose  the  theme  of 
religion  for  the  scientific  labour  of  fife  who  have  not  some 
interest  in  religion.  Men  of  these  three  classes  have  accepted 
the  doctrine  of  evolution.  Comte  thought  he  had  discovered 
it.  Spencer  and  those  for  whom  we  have  taken  him  as  type, 
did  service  in  the  elaboration  of  it.  To  the  men  of  our  third 
group,  the  truth  of  evolution  seems  no  longer  debatable. 
Here  too,  in  the  word  '  evolution,'  we  have  a  term  which  has 
been  used  with  laxity.  It  corresponds  to  a  notion  which 
has  only  gradually  been  evolved.  Its  implications  were  at 
first  by  no  means  understood.  It  was  associated  with  a 
mechanical  view  of  the  universe  which  was  diametrically 
opposed  to  its  truth.  Still,  there  could  not  be  a  doubt  that 
the  doctrine  contravened  those  ideas  as  to  the  origin  of 
the  world,  and  more  particularly  of  man,  of  the  relations  of 
species,  and  especially  of  the  human  species  to  other  forms 
of  animal  life,  which  had  immemorially  prevailed  in  Christian 
circles  and  which  had  the  witness  of  the  Scriptures  on  their 
behalf.  If  we  were  to  attempt,  with  acknowledged  latitude, 
to  name  a  book  whose  import  might  be  said  to  be  cardinal 
for  the  whole  movement  treated  of  in  this  chapter,  that  book 
would  be  Darwin's  Origin  of  Species,  which  was  published  / 
in  1859. 

Long  before  Darwin  the  creation  legend  had  been  recog- 
nised as  such.  The  astronomy  of  the  seventeenth  century] 
had  removed  the  earth  from  its  central  position.  The  geology 
of  the  eighteenth  had  shown  how  long  must  have  been  thej 
ages  of  the  laying  down  of  the  earth's  strata.  The  question  of 
the  descent  of  man,  however,  brought  home  the  significance 
of  evolution  for  religion  more  forcibly  than  any  other  aspect 
of  the  debate  had  done.  There  were  scientific  men  of  dis- 
tinction who  were  not  convinced  of  the  truth  of  the  evolu- 


V.J  NATURAL  AND  SOCIAL  SCIENCES  155 

tionary  hypothesis.  To  most  Christian  men  the  theory  seemed 
to  leave  no  unique  distinction  or  spiritual  quality  for  man. 
It  seemed  to  render  impossible  faith  in  the  Scriptures  as 
revelation.  To  many  it  seemed  that  the  whole  issue  as 
between  a  spiritual  and  a  purely  materialistic  view  of  the 
universe  was  involved.  Particularly  was  this  true  of  the 
English-speaking  peoples. 

One  other  factor  in  the  transformation  of  the  Christian  view 
needs  to  be  dwelt  upon.  It  is  less  theoretical  than  those  upon 
which  we  have  dwelt.  It  is  the  influence  of  socialism,  taking^ 
that  word  in  its  largest  sense.  An  industrial  civilisation  has 
developed  both  the  good  and  the  evil  of  individualism  in  in- 
credible degree.  The  unity  of  society  which  the  feudal  system! 
and  the  Church  gave  to  Europe  in  the  Middle  Age  had  been 
destroyed.  The  individuahsm  and  democracy  which  were^ 
essential  to  Protestantism  notoriously  aided  the  civil  and 
social  revolution,  but  the  centrifugal  forces  were  too  great. 
Initiative  has  been  wonderful,  but  cohesion  is  lacking.  Demo- 
cracy is  yet  far  from  being  realised.  The  civil  liberations 
which  were  the  great  crises  of  the  western  world  from  1640  to 
1830  appear  now  to  many  as  deprived  of  their  fruit.  Govern- 
ments undertake  on  behalf  of  subjects  that  which  formerly 
no  government  would  have  dreamed  of  doing.  The  demand 
is  that  the  Church,  too,  become  a  factor  in  the  furtherance  of 
the  outward  and  present  welfare  of  mankind.  If  that  meant 
the  call  to  love  and  charity  it  would  be  an  old  refrain.  That 
is  exactly  what  it  does  not  mean.  It  means  the  attack  upon 
evils  which  make  charity  necessary.  It  means  the  taking 
up  into  the  idealisation  of  religion  the  endeavour  to  redress 
all  wrongs,  to  do  away  with  all  evils,  to  confer  all  goods,  to 
create  a  new  world  and  not,  as  heretofore,  mainly  at  least, 
a  new  soul  in  the  midst  of  the  old  world.  No  one  can  deny 
either  the  magnitude  of  the  evils  which  it  is  sought  to  remedy, 
or  the  greatness  of  the  goal  which  is  thus  set  before  religion. 
The  volume  of  religious  and  Christian  literature  devoted  to 
these  social  questions  is  immense.  It  is  revolutionary  in  its  * 
effect.  For,  after  all,  the  very  gist  of  religion  has  been  held\ 
to  be  that  it  deals  primarily  with  the  inner  life  and  the  tran-/ 


156    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

scendent  world.  That  it  has  dealt  with  the  problem  of  the 
inner  life  and  transcendent  world  in  such  a  manner  as  to 
retard,  or  even  only  not  to  further,  the  other  aspects  of  man's 
life  is  indeed  a  grave  indictment.  That  it  should,  however, 
see  ends  in  the  outer  hfe  and  present  world  as  ends  fully 
sufficient  in  themselves,  that  it  should  cease  to  set  these  in 
the  light  of  the  eternal,  is  that  it  should  cease  to  be  re- 
ligion. The  physical  and  social  sciences  have  given  to  men  an 
outward  setting  in  the  world,  a  basis  of  power  and  happiness 
such  as  men  never  have  enjoyed.  Yet  the  tragic  failure  of 
our  civilisation  to  give  to  vast  multitudes  that  power  and 
happiness,  is  the  proof  that  something  more  than  the  outward. 
basis  is  needed.  The  success  of  our  civilisation  is  its  failure. 
This  is  by  no  means  a  recurrence  to  the  old  antithesis  of 
religion  and  civilisation,  as  if  these  were  contradictory  ele- 
ments. On  the  contrary,  it  is  but  to  show  that  the  present 
world  of  religion  and  of  economics  are  not  two  worlds,  but 
merely  different  aspects  of  the  same  world.  Therewith  it  is  not 
alleged  that  religion  has  not  a  specific  contribution  to  make. 

Positivism 

The  permanent  influence  of  that  phase  of  thought  which 
called  itself  Positivism  has  not  been  great.     But  a  school  of 
j\  thought  which  numbered  among  its  adherents  such  men  and 
r^  women  asiJolm  Stuart_Miiy. George  Henry  Lewes,  George 
»     Eliot,  Frederic  Harrison,  and  Matthew  Arnold,  cannot  be  said  j 
to  have  been  without  significance.     A  book  upon  the  trans-] 
lation  of  which  Harriet  Martineau  worked  with  sustained^ 
enthusiasm  cannot  be  dismissed  as  if  it  were  merely  a  curiosity. 
Comte's  work,  Cours  de  Philosophie  Positive,  appeared  between 
the  years  1830  and  1842.     Littre  was  his  chief  French  inter- 
preter.    But  the  history  of  the  positivist  movement  belongs 
to  the  history  of  English  philosophical  and  religious  though t^, 
rather  than  to  that  of  France. 

Comte  was  bom  at  Montpellier  in  1798,  of  a  family  of  in-' 
tense  Roman  Catholic  piety.  He  showed  at  school  a  pre- 
cocity which  might  bear  comparison  with  Mill's.     Expelled 


v.]  NATURAL  AND  SOCIAL  SCIENCES  157 

from  school,  cast  off  by  his  parents,  dismissed  by  the  elder 
Casimir  Perier,  whose  secretary  he  had  been,  he  eked  out  a 
living  by  tutoring  in  mathematics.     Friends  of  his  philosophy 
rallied  to  his  support.     He  never  occupied  a  post  comparable/ 
with   his  genius.     He  was   unhappy   in  his   marriage.     Hej 
passed  through  a  period  of  mental  aberration,  due,  perhaps,* 
to  the  strain  under  which  he  worked.     He  did  not  regain  his 
liberty  without  an  experience  which  embittered  him  against 
the  Church.     During  the  fourteen  years  of  the  production^ 
of  his  book  he  cut  himself  off  from  any  reading  save  that  of 
current  scientific  discovery.     He  came  under  the  influence  of  | 
Madame  Vaux,  whom,  after  her  death,  he  idolised  even  more  . 
than  before.     For  the  problem  which,  in  the  earlier  portion 
of  his  work,  he  set  himself,  that  namely,  of  the  organising  of 
the  sciences  into  a  compact  body  of  doctrine,  he  possessed] 
extraordinary  gifts.     Later,  he  took  on  rather  the  air  of  a 
high  priest  of  humanity,  legislating  concerning  a  new  religion.  ' 
It  is  but  fair  to  say  that  at  this  point  Littre  and  many  others 
parted  company  with  Comte.     He  developed  a  habit  and 
practice  ascetic  in  its  rigour  and  mystic  in  its  devotion  to  the  i 
positivists'  religion — the  worship  of  humanity.     He  was  they 
friend  and  counsellor  of  working-men  and  agitators,  of  little 
children,  of  the  poor  and  miserable.     He  ended  his  rather 
pathetic  and  turbulent  career  in  1857,  gathering  a  few  dis- 
ciples about  his  bed  as  he  remembered   that  Socrates  had 
done. 

Comte  begins  with  the  natural  sciences  and  postulates  the\ 
doctrine  of  evolution.  To  the  definition  of  this  doctrine  he 
makes  some  interesting  approaches.  The  discussion  of  the 
order  and  arrangement  of  the  various  sciences  and  of  their 
characteristic  differences  is  wonderful  in  its  insight  and 
suggestiveness.  He  asserts  that  in  the  study  of  nature  we\ 
are  concerned  solely  with  the  facts  before  us  and  the  relations  \ 
which  connect  those  facts.  We  have  nothing  to  do  with 
the  supposed  essence  or  hidden  nature  and  meaning  of  those 
facts.  Facts  and  the  invariable  laws  which  govern  them 
are  the  only  legitimate  objects  of  pursuit.  Comte  infers  that 
because  we  can  know,  in  this  sense,  only  phenomena  and  their  \ 


158     HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

relations,  we  should  in  consequence  guard  against  illusions 
which  creep  in  again  if  we  so  much  as  use  the  words  principle, 
or  cause,  or  will,  or  force.  By  phenomena  must  be  understood 
objects  of  perception,  to  the  exclusion,  for  example,  of  psycho- 
logical changes  reputed  to  be  known  in  self-consciousness. 
That  there  is  no  knowledge  but  of  the  physical,  that  there  is 
no  knowing  except  by  perception — this  is  ever  reiterated  as 
self-evident.  Even  psychology,  resting  as  it  does  largely 
upon  the  observation  of  the  self  by  the  self,  must  be  illusive.)  / 
Physiology,  or  even  phrenology,  with  the  value  of  which  ^ 
Comte  was  much  impressed,  must  take  its  place.  E very- 
object  of  knowledge  is  other  than  the  knowing  subject.  What- 
ever else  the  mind  knows,  it  can  never  know  itself.  By  in- 
vincible necessity  the  human  mind  can  observe  all  phenomena 
except  its  own.  Commenting  upon  this,  James  Martineau 
observed  :  '  We  have  had  in  the  history  of  thought  numerous 
forms  of  idealism  which  construed  all  outward  phenomena 
as  mere  appearances  within  the  mind.  We  have  hitherto 
had  no  strictly  corresponding  materialism,  which  claimed 
certainty  for  the  outer  world  precisely  because  it  was  foreign 
to  ourselves.'  Man  is  the  highest  product  of  nature,  the 
highest  stage  of  nature's  most  mature  and  complex  form. 
Man  as  individual  is  nothing  more.  Physiology  gives  us  not 
merely  his  external  constitution  and  one  set  of  relations.  It 
is  the  whole  science  of  man.  There  is  no  study  of  mind  in 
which  its  actions  and  states  can  be  contemplated  apart  from 
the  physical  basis  in  conjunction  with  which  mind  exists. 

Thus  far  man  has  been  treated  only  biologically,  as  in- 
dividual. We  must  advance  to  man  in  society.  Almost  one 
half  of  Comte's  bulky  work  is  devoted  to  this  side  of  the 
inquiry.  Social  phenomena  are  a  class  complex  beyond  any 
which  have  yet  been  investigated.  So  much  is  this  the  case 
and  so  difficult  is  the  problem  presented,  that  Comte  felt 
constrained  in  some  degree  to  change  his  method.  We 
proceed  from  experience,  from  data  in  fact,  as  before.  But 
the  facts  are  not  mere  illustrations  of  the  so-called  laws  of 
individual  human  nature.  Social  facts  are  the  results  also  of 
situations  which  represent  the  accumulated  influence  of  past 


F.]  NATURAL  AND  SOCIAL  SCIENCES  159 

generations.  In  this,  as  against  Bentham,  for  example,  with 
his  endless  recurrence  to  human  nature,  as  he  called  it, 
Comte  was  right.  Comte  thus  first  gave  the  study  of  history 
its  place  in  sociology.  In  this  study  of  history  and  sociology, 
the  collective  phenomena  are  more  accessible  to  us  and 
better  known  by  us,  than  are  the  parts  of  which  they  are 
composed.  We  therefore  proceed  here  from  the  general  to 
the  particular,  not  from  the  particular  to  the  general,  as 
in  research  of  the  kinds  previously  named.  The  state  of  every 
part  of  the  social  organisation  is  intimately  connected  with 
the  contemporaneous  state  of  all  the  other  parts.  Philosophy,  [ 
science,  the  fine  arts,  commerce,  navigation,  government,  are  I 
all  in  close  mutual  dependence.  When  any  considerable  ! 
change  takes  place  in  one,  we  may  know  that  a  parallel  change 
has  preceded  or  will  follow  in  the  others.  The  progress  of 
society  is  not  the  aggregate  of  partial  changes,  but  the  product, 
of  a  single  impulse  acting  through  all  the  partial  agenciesj 
It  can  therefore  be  most  easily  traced  by  studying  all 
together.  These  are  the  main  principles  of  sociological  in- 
vestigation as  set  forth  by  Comte,  some  of  them  as  they  have 
been  phrased  by  Mill. 

Tlie  most  sweeping  exemplification  of  the  axiom  last 
alluded  to,  as  to  parallel  changes,  is  Comte's  so-called  law 
of  the  three  states  of  civilisation.  Under  this  law,  he  asserts, 
the  whole  historical  evolution  can  be  summed  up.  It  is  as 
certain  as  the  law  of  gravitation.  Everything  in  human 
society  has  passed,  as  has  the  individual  man,  through  the 
theological  and  then  through  the  metaphysical  stage,  and  so'N 
arrives  at  the  positive  stage.  In  this  last  stage  of  thought 
nothing  either  of  superstition  or  of  speculation  will  survive. 
Theology  and  metaphysics  Comte  repeatedly  characterises  as 
the  two  successive  stages  of  nescience,  unavoidable  as  pre- 
ludes to  science.  Equally  unavoidable  is  it  that  science  shall 
ultimately  prevail  in  their  place.  The  advance  of  science 
having  once  begun,  there  is  no  possibility  but  that  it  will 
ultimately  possess  itself  of  all.  One  hears  the  echo  of  this 
confidence  in  Haeckel  also.  There  is  a  persistence  about 
the  denial  of  any  knowledge  whatsoever  that  goes  beyond 


160     HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT   [ch. 

external  facts,  which   ill   comports  with  the  pretensions  of  / 
positivism   to   be  a  philosophy.      For  its  final  claim  is  not 
that  it  is  content  to  rest  in  experimental  science.     On  the 
contrary,  it  would  transform  this  science  into  a  homogeneous 
doctrine  which  is  able  to  explain  everything  in  the  universe.  _ 
Tliis  is  but  a  tour  de  force.     The  promise  is  fulfilled  through 
the  denial  of  the  reality  of  everything  which  science  caimot 
explain.     Comte  was  never  willing  to  face  the  fact  that  the 
very  existence  of  knowledge  has  a  noumenal  as  well  as  a"^ 
phenomenal    side.     The    reasonableness    of   the    universe   is) 
certainly  a  conception  which  we  bring  to  the  observation  of 
nature.     If  we  did  not  thus  bring  it  with  us,  no  mere  obser- 
vation of  nature  would  ever  give  it  to  us.     It  is  impossible  for 
science  to  get  rid  of  the  conception  of  force,  and  ultimately 
of  cause.    There  can  be  no  phenomenon  which  is  not  a  mani-" 
festation  of  something.     The  very  nomenclature  falls  into 
hopeless    confusion    without    these    conceptions.     Yet    the 
moment  we  touch  them  we  transcend  science  and  pass  into 
the  realm  of  philosophy.     It  is  mere  juggling  with  words  to 
say  that  our  science  has  now  become  a  philosophy. 

The  adjective  '  positive  '  contains  the  same  fallacy.    Appar-^ 
ently  Comte  meant  by  the  choice  of  it  to  convey  the  sense  that 
he  would  limit  research  to  phenomena  in  their  orders  of  resem^ 
blance,  co-existence  and  succession.     But  to  call  the  inquiry  v 
into  phenomena  positive,  in  the  sense  that  it  alone  deals  with  J 
reality,  to  imply  that  the  inquiry  into  causes  deals  with  that 
which  has  no  reality,  is  to  beg  the  question.    This  is  not  a 
premise  with  which  he  may  set  out  in  the  evolution  of  his 
system. 

Comte  denied  the  accusation  of  materialism  and  atheism. 
He  did  the  first  only  by  changing  the  meaning  of  the  term 
materialism.  Materialism  the  world  has  supposed  to  be  the 
view  of  man's  condition  and  destiny  which  makes  these  to\ 
begin  and  end  in  nature.  That  certainly  was  Comte's  view.' 
The  accusation  of  atheism  also  he  avoids  by  a  mere  play  on 
words.  He  is  not  without  a  God.  Humanity  is  God.  Man'^ 
kind  is  the  positivist's  Supreme.  Altruism  takes  the  place  of 
devotion.     The  devotion  so  long  wasted  upon  a  mere  creature 


; 


v.]  NATURAL  AND  SOCIAL  SCIENCES  161 

of  the  imagination,  to  whom  it  could  do  no  good,  he  would  now 
give  to  men  who  sorely  need  it  and  can  obviously  profit  by  it 
Surely  the  antithesis  between  nature  and  the  supernatural, 
in  the  form  in  which  Comte  argues  against  it,  is  now 
abandoned  by  thoughtful  people.  Equally  the  antithesis  of 
altruism  to  the  service  of  God  is  perverse.  It  arouses  one's 
pity  that- Comte  should  not  have  seen  how,  in  true  religion 
these  two  things  coalesce. 

Moreover,  this  deification  of  mankind,  in  so  far  as  it  is  not] 
a  sounding  phrase,  is  an  absurdity.  When  Comte  says,  for^ 
example,  that  the  authority  of  humanity  must  take  the  place 
of  that  of  God,  he  has  recognised  that  religion  must  havej 
authority.  Indeed,  the  whole  social  order  must  have  authority.! 
However,  this  is  not  for  him,  as  we  are  accustomed  to  say,  the 
authority  of  the  truth  and  of  the  right.  There  is  no  such 
abstraction  as  the  truth,  coming  to  various  manifestations. 
There  is  no  such  thing  as  right,  apart  from  relatively  right 
concrete  measures.  There  is  no  larger  being  indwelling  in 
men.  Society,  humanity  in  its  collective  capacity,  must,  if 
need  be,  override  the  individual.  Yet  Comte  despises  the 
mere  rule  of  majorities.  The  majority  which  he  would  have  ^ 
rule  is  that  of  those  who  have  the  scientific  mind.  We  mayt 
admit  that  in  this  he  aims  at  the  supremacy  of  truth.  But, 
in  fact,  he  prepares  the  way  for  a  doctrinaire  tyranny  which,, 
of  all  forms  of  government,  might  easily  turn  out  to  be  thd 
worst  which  a  long-suffering  humanity  has  yet  endured. 

In  the  end,  we  are  told,  love  is  to  take  the  place  of  force. 
Humanity  is  present  to  us  first  in  our  mothers,  wives  and 
daughters.  For  these  it  is  present  in  their  fathers,  husbands, 
sons.  From  this  primary  circle  love  widens  and  worship  ex- 
tends as  hearts  enlarge.  It  is  the  prayer  to  humanity  which 
first  rises  above  the  mere  selfishness  of  the  effort  to  get 
something  out  of  God.  Remembrance  in  the  hearts  of  those 
who  loved  us  and  owe  something  to  us  is  the  only  worthy 
form  of  immortality.  Clearly  it  is  only  the  caricature  of 
prayer  or  of  the  desire  of  immortality  which  rises  before 
Comte's  mind  as  the  thing  to  be  escaped.  For  this  caricature 
religious  men,  both  Catholic  and  Protestant,  without  doubt, 


1C2     HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

gave  him  cause.     There  were  to  be  seven  sacraments,  corre- 
sponding to  seven  significant  epochs  in  a  man's  career.   There 
were  to  be  priests  for  the  performance  of  these  sacraments  and) 
for  the  inculcation  of  the  doctrines  of  positivism.    There  were 
to  be  temples   of  humanity,  affording  opportunity  for  and| 
reminder  of  this  worship.     In  each  temple  there  was  to  be  , 
set  up  the  symbol  of  the  positivist  religion,  a  woman  of  thirtyj 
years  with  her  little  son  in  her  arms.     Littre  spoke  bitterly 
of  the  positivist  religion  as  a  lapse  of  the  author  into  his  old? 
aberration.    This  religion  was  certainly  regarded  as  negligible' 
by  many  to  whom  his  system  as  a  whole  meant  a  great  deal. 
At  least,  it  is  an  interesting  example,  as  is  also  his  transfor-\ 
mation  of  science  into  a  philosophy,  of  the  resurgence  of  valid  ' 
elements  in  life,  even  in  the  case  of  a  man  who  has  made  it 
his  boast  to  do  away  with  them. 

Naturalism  and  Agnosticism 

We  may  take  Spencer  as  representative  of  a  group  of  men 
who,  after  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century,  laboured 
enthusiastically   to   set  forth   evolutionary  and  naturalistic 
theories  of  the  universe.     These  theories  had  also,  for  the 
most  part,  the  common  trait  that  they  professed  agnosticism 
as  to  all  that  lay  beyond  the  reach  of  the  natural-scientific  ) 
methods,  in  which  the  authors  were  adept.     Both  Ward  and  \ 
Boutroux  accept  Spencer  as  such  a  type.     Agnosticism  forx 
obvious  reasons  could  be  no  system.  Naturalism  is  a  tendency 
in  interpretation  of  the  universe  which  has  many  ramifica- 
tions.   There  is  no  intention  of  making  the  reference  to  one 
man's   work   do   more   than    serve  as   introduction   to    the 
field. 

Spencer  was  eager  in  denial  that  he  had  been  influenced  by 
Comte.  Yet  there  is  a  certain  reminder  of  Comte  in  Spencer's 
monumental  endeavour  to  systematise  the  whole  mass  of 
modern  scientific  knowledge,  under  the  general  title  of  '  A) 
Sjnithetic  Philosophy.'  He  would  show  the  unity  of  the] 
sciences  and  their  common  principles  or,  rather,  the  one  great 
common  principle  which  they  all  illustrate,  the  doctrine  of 


v.]  NATURAL  AND  SOCIAL  SCIENCES  163 

evolution,  as  this  had  taken  shape  since  the  time  of  Darwin. 
Since  1904  we  have  an  autobiography  of  Herbert  Spencer, 
which,  to  be  sure,  seems  largely  to  have  been  written  prior  to 
1889.  The  book  is  interesting,  as  well  in  the  light  which  it 
throws  upon  the  expansion  of  the  sciences  and  the  develop- 
ment of  the  doctrine  of  evolution  in  those  years,  as  in  the 
revelation  of  the  personal  traits  of  the  man  himself.  Con- 
cerning these  Tolstoi  T\Tote  to  a  friend,  apropos  of  a  gift  of 
the  book  :  '  In  autobiographies  the  most  important  psycho- 
logical phenomena  are  often  revealed  quite  independently 
of  the  author's  will.' 

Spencer  was  bom  in  1820  in  Derby,  the  son  of  a  school-  / 
master.     He  came  of  Nonconformist  ancestry  of  most  marked 
individuality.     His   early   education   was   irregular   and   in- 
adequate.    Before  he  reached  the  age  of  seventeen  his  read- 
ing had  been  immense.     He  worked  with  an  engineer  in  the  I 
period  of  the  building  of  the  railways  in  the  Mdlands.     HeJ 
always  retained  his  interest  in  inventions.     He  wrote  for  the 
newspapers  and  magazines   and  definitely  launched  upon  a 
literary  career.     At  the  age  of  thirty  he  published  his  first^ 
book,  on  Social  Statics.     He  made  friends  among  the  most 
notable  men  and  women  of  his  age.     So  early  as  1855  hei 
was  the  victim  of  a  disease  of  the  heart  which  never  left  himj 
It  was  on  his  recovery  from  his  first  grave  attack  that  he 
shaped  the  plan  which  henceforth  held  him,  of  organising  the 
modern  sciences  and  incorporating  them  into  what  he  called  aj 
synthetic  philosophy.     There  was  immense  increase  in  actual 
knowledge  and  in  the  power  of  his  reflection  on  that  know- 
ledge, as  the  years  went  by.     A  generation  elapsed  between! 
the  publication  of  his  First  Principles  and  the  conclusion  ofj 
his  more  formal  Hterary  labours.     There  is  something  cap-^ 
tivating  about  a  man's  life,  the  energy  of  which  remains  so 
little    impaired    that   he  esteems   it   better  to  write  a  new 
book,  covering  some  untouched  portion  of  his  scheme,  than/ 
to  give  to  an  earlier  volume  the  revision  which  in  the  light' 
of  his  matured  convictions  it  may  need.      His  philosophical 
limitations  he  never  transcended.     He  docs  not  so  naively 
offer  a  substitute  for  philosophy  as  does  Comte.     But  he  was 


164    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

no  master  in  philosophy.     There  is  a  reflexion  of  the  con-  \ 
sciousness  of  this  fact  in  his  agnosticism.  ^ 

That  the  effect  of  the  agnostic  contention  has  been  great, 
and  on  the  whole  salutary,  few  would  deny.     Spencer's  own 
later  work  shows  that  his  declaration,  that  the  absolute  which 
lies  behind  the  universe  is  unknowable,  is  to  be  taken  witK\^ 
considerable  qualification.     It  is  only  a  relative  unknowable-  n 
ness  which  he  predicates.     Moreover,  before  Spencer's  death, 
the  doctrine  of  evolution  had  made  itself  profoundly  felt  in 
the  discussion  of  all  aspects  of  life,  including  that  of  religion. 
There  seemed  no  longer  any  reason  for  the  barrier  between\ 
science    and    religion    which    Spencer    had    once    thought ' 
requisite. 

The  epithet  agnostic,  as  applied  to  a  certain  attitude  of 
scientific  mind,  is  just,  as  over  against  excessive  claims  to  \ 
valid  knowledge  made,  now  by  theology  and  now  by  specu- 
lative philosophy.  It  is  hardly  descriptive  in  any  absolute 
sense.  Spencer  had  coined  the  rather  fortunate  illustration 
which  describes  science  as  a  gradually  increasing  sphere, 
such  that  every  addition  to  its  surface  does  but  bring  us  into . 
more  extensive  contact  with  surrounding  nescience.  Even  ] 
upon  this  illustration  Ward  has  commented  that  the  metaphor/ 
is  misleading.  The  continent  of  our  knowledge  is  not  merely 
bounded  by  an  ocean  of  ignorance.  It  is  intersected  and  cut 
up  by  straits  and  seas  of  ignorance.  The  author  of  Ecce 
Caelum  has  declared  :  '  Things  die  out  under  the  microscope 
into  the  same  unfathomed  and,  so  far  as  we  can  see,  unfathom- 
able mystery,  into  which  they  die  off  beyond  the  range  of  our 
most  powerful  telescope.'  This  sense  of  the  circumambient 
unknown  has  become  cardinal  with  the  best  spirits  of  the  age. 
Men  have  a  more  rigorous  sense  of  what  constitutes  know- 
ledge. They  have  reckoned  more  strictly  with  the  methods 
by  which  alone  secure  and  solid  knowledge  may  be  attained. 
They  have  undisguised  scepticism  as  to  alleged  knowledge 
not  arrived  at  in  these  ways.  It  was  the  working  of  these 
motives  which  gave  to  the  labours  of  the  middle  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  so  prevailingly  the  aspect  of  denial,  the  char- 
acter which  Carlyle  described  as  an  everlasting  No.      This 


v.]  NATURAL  AND  SOCIAL  SCIENCES  165 

was  but  a  preparatory  stage,  a  retrogression  for  a  new  and 
firmer  advance. 

In  the  sense  of  the  recognition  of  our  ignorance  and  of  a 
becoming  modesty  of  affirmation,  over  against  the  mystery 
into  which  all  our  thought  runs  out,  we  cannot  reject  the 
correction  which  agnosticism  has  administered.  It  is  a  fact 
which  has  had  disastrous  consequences,  that  precisely  the 
department  of  thought,  namely  the  religious,  which  one 
might  suppose  would  most  have  reminded  men  of  the  outlying 
mystery,  that  phase  of  life  whose  very  atmosphere  is  mystery, 
has  most  often  been  guilty  of  arrant  dogmatism.  It  has  been 
thus  guilty  upon  the  basis  of  the  claim  that  it  possessed  a  reve- 
lation. It  has  allowed  itself  unlimited  licence  of  affirmation 
concerning  the  most  remote  and  difficult  matters.  It  has 
alleged  miraculously  communicated  information  concerning 
those  matters.  It  has  clothed  with  a  divine  authoritativeness, 
overriding  the  mature  reflexion  and  laborious  investigation 
of  learned  men,  that  which  was,  after  all,  nothing  but  the 
innocent  imaginings  of  the  childhood  of  the  race.  In  this 
good  sense  of  a  parallel  to  that  agnosticism  which  scientists 
profess  for  themselves  within  their  own  appointed  realm, 
there  is  a  religious  agnosticism  which  is  one  of  the  best  fruits 
of  the  labour  of  the  age.  It  is  not  that  religious  men  have 
abandoned  the  thought  of  revelation.  They  apprehended 
more  justly  the  nature  of  revelation.  They  confess  that  i 
there  is  much  ignorance  which  revelation  does  not  mitigate.J 
Exeunt  omnia  in  mysterium.  They  are  prepared  to  sayj 
concerning  many  of  the  dicta  of  religiosity,  that  they  cannot 
affirm  their  truth.  They  are  prepared  to  say  concerning  the 
experience  of  God  and  the  soul,  that  they  know  these  with  an 
indefeasible  certitude.  This  just  and  wholesome  attitude 
toward  religious  truth  is  only  a  corollary  of  the  attitude 
which  science  has  taught  us  toward  all  truth  whatsoever. 

The  strictly  philosophic  term  phenomenon,  to  which  science 
has  taken  so  kindly,  is  in  itself  an  explicit  avowal  of  something 
beyond  the  phenomenal.     Spencer  is  careful  to  insist  upon  this  \ 
relation  of  the  phenomenal  to  the  noumenal.     His  Synthetic  ' 
Philosophy  opens  with  an  exposition  of  this  non-relative  or 


166     HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT   [ch. 

absolute,  without  which  the  relative  itself  becomes  contra- 
dictory. It  is  an  essential  part  of  Spencer's  doctrine  to 
maintain  that  our  consciousness  of  the  absolute,  indefinite  as 
it  is,  is  positive  and  not  negative.  '  Though  the  absolute 
cannot  in  any  manner  or  degree  be  known,  in  the  strict  sense 
of  knowing,  yet  we  find  that  its  positive  existence  is  a  neces- 
sary datum  of  consciousness.  The  belief  which  this  datum 
of  consciousness  constitutes  has  a  higher  warrant  than  any 
other  belief  whatsoever.'  In  short,  the  absolute  or  noumenal, 
according  to  Spencer,  though  not  known  as  the  phenomenal 
or  relative  is  known,  is  so  far  from  being  for  knowledge  a 
pure  blank,  that  the  phenomenal,  which  is  said  to  be  known, 
is  in  the  strict  sense  inconceivable  without  it.  This  actuality 
behind  appearances,  without  which  appearances  are  unthink- 
able, is  by  Spencer  identified  with  that  ultimate  verity  upon 
which  religion  ever  insists.  Religion  itself  is  a  phenomenon\ 
and  the  source  and  secret  of  most  complex  and  interesting  | 
phenomena.  It  has  always  been  of  the  greatest  importance 
in  the  history  of  mankind.  It  has  been  able  to  hold  its  own 
in  face  of  the  attacks  of  science.  It  must  contain  an  element 
of  truth.  All  religions,  however,  assert  that  their  God  is  for'\ 
us  not  altogether  cognisable,  that  God  is  a  great  mystery./ 
The  higher  their  rank,  the  more  do  they  acknowledge  this. 
It  is  by  the  flippant  invasion  of  this  mystery  that  the 
popular  religiosity  offends.  It  talks  of  God  as  if  he  were  a>^ 
man  in  the  next  street.  It  does  not  distinguish  between 
merely  imaginative  fetches  into  the  truth,  and  presumably 
accurate  definition  of  that  truth.  Equally,  the  attempts 
which  are  logically  possible  at  metaphysical  solutions  of  the 
problem,  namely,  theism,  pantheism,  and  atheism,  if  they  are 
consistently  carried  out,  assert,  each  of  them,  more  than  we 
know  and  are  involved  in  contradiction  with  themselves. 
But  the  results  of  modern  physics  and  chemistry  reveal,  as"^ 
the  constant  element  in  all  phenomena,  force.  This  mani-y 
fests  itself  in  various  forms  which  are  interchangeable,  while 
amid  all  these  changes  the  force  remains  the  same.  This 
latter  must  be  regarded  as  the  reality,  and  basis  of  all  that 
is  relative  and  phenomenal.     The  entire  universe  is  to  be 


v.]  NATURAL  AND  SOCIAL  SCIENCES  167 

explained  from  the  movements  of  this  absolute  force.  The 
phenomena  of  nature  and  of  mental  life  come  under  the  same 
general  laws  of  matter,  motion,  and  force. 

Spencer's  doctrine,  as  here  stated,  is  not  adequate  to 
account  for  the  world  of  mental  life  or  adapted  to  serve  as  the  I 
basis  of  a  reconciliation  of  science  and  religion.  It  does  'i 
not  carry  us  beyond  materialism.  Spencer's  real  inten-i 
tion  was  directed  to  something  higher  than  that.  If  the  J 
absolute  is  to  be  conceived  at  all,  it  is  as  a  necessary  corre-l 
lative  of  our  self -consciousness.  If  we  get  the  idea  of  force 
from  the  experience  of  our  own  power  of  volition,  is  it  not 
natural  to  think  of  mind-force  as  the  prius  of  physical  force,  I 
and  not  the  reverse  ?  Accordingly,  the  absolute  force,  basis 
of  all  specific  forces,  would  be  mind  and  will.  The  doctrine  of 
evolution  would  harmonise  perfectly  with  these  inferences. 
But  it  would  have  to  become  idealistic  evolution,  as  in  Schel- 
ling,  instead  of  materialistic,  as  in  Comte.  We  are  obliged, 
Spencer  owns,  to  refer  the  phenomenal  world  of  law  and  order 
to  a  first  cause.  He  says  that  this  first  cause  is  incompre- 
hensible. Yet  he  further  says,  when  the  question  of  attribut- 
ing personality  to  this  first  cause  is  raised,  that  the  choice 
is  not  between  personality  and  something  lower.  It  is 
between  personality  and  something  higher.  To  this  may 
belong  a  mode  of  being  as  much  transcending  intelligence 
and  will  as  these  transcend  mechanical  motion.  It  is  strange, 
he  says,  that  men  should  suppose  the  highest  worship  to  He 
in  assimilating  the  object  of  worship  to  themselves.  And  yet, 
again,  in  one  of  the  latest  of  his  works  he  writes  :  '  Unex- 
pected as  it  will  be  to  most  of  my  readers,  I  must  assert  that 
the  power  which  manifests  itself  in  consciousness  is  but  a 
differently  conditioned  form  of  the  power  which  manifests  itself 
beyond  consciousness.  The  conception  to  which  the  explora- 
tion of  nature  everywhere  tends  is  much  less  that  of  a  uni- 
verse of  dead  matter  than  that  of  a  universe  everywhere  alive.' 

Similar  is  the  issue  in  the  reflexion  of  Huxley.  Agnos- 
ticism had  at  first  been  asserted  in  relation  to  the  spiritual 
and  the  teleological.  It  ended  in  fastening  upon  the  material 
and  mechanical.   After  all,  says  Huxley,  in  one  of  his  essays : — ■ 


168      HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT  [ch. 

*  What  do  we  know  of  this  terrible  matter,  except  as  a  name 
for  an  unknown  and  hypothetical  cause  of  states  of  our  own 
consciousness  ?  Again,  what  do  we  know  of  that  spirit  over 
whose  threatened  extinction  by  matter  so  great  lamentation 
has  now  arisen,  except  that  it  is  also  a  name  for  an  unknown 
and  hypothetical  cause  of  states  of  our  consciousness  ?  '  He 
concedes  that  matter  is  inconceivable  apart  from  mind,  but 
that  mind  is  not  inconceivable  apart  from  matter.  He  con- 
cedes that  the  conception  of  universal  and  necessary  law  is 
an  ideal.  It  is  an  invention  of  the  mind's  own  devising.  It 
is  not  a  physical  fact.  In  brief,  taking  agnostic  naturalism 
just  as  it  seemed  disposed  a  generation  ago  to  present  itself, 
it  now  appears  as  if  it  had  been  turned  exactly  inside  out. 
Instead  of  the  physical  world  being  primary  and  fundamental 
and  the  mental  world  secondary,  if  not  altogether  proble- 
matical, the  precise  converse  is  true. 

Nature,  as  science  regards  it,  may  be  described  as  a  system 
whose  parts,  be  they  simple  or  complex,  are  wholly  governed 
by  universal  laws.  Knowledge  of  these  laws  is  an  indis- 
pensable condition  of  that  control  of  nature  upon  which 
human  welfare  in  so  large  degree  depends.  But  this  reign 
of  law  is  an  hypothesis.  It  is  not  an  axiom  which  it  would 
be  absurd  to  deny.  It  is  not  an  obvious  fact,  thrust  upon  us 
whether  we  ^^ill  or  no.  Experiences  are  possible  without 
the  conception  of  law  and  order.  The  fruit  of  experience  in 
knowledge  is  not  possible  without  it.  That  is  only  to  say 
that  the  reason  why  we  assume  that  nature  is  a  connected 
system  of  uniform  laws,  lies  in  the  fact  that  we  ourselves  are 
self-conscious  personalities.  When  the  naturalists  say  that 
the  notion  of  cause  is  a  fetish,  an  anthropomorphic  super- 
stition which  we  must  eliminate,  we  have  to  answer  :  *  from 
the  realm  of  empirical  science  perhaps,  but  not  from  experience 
as  a  whole.'  Indeed,  a  glance  at  the  history,  and  particularly 
at  the  popular  literature,  of  science  affords  the  interesting 
spectacle  of  the  rise  of  an  hallucination,  the  growth  of  a  habit 
of  mythological  speech,  which  is  truly  surprising.  We  begin 
to  hear  of  self-existent  laws  which  reign  supreme  and  bind 
nature  fast  in  fact.     By  this  learned  substitution  for  God, 


v.]  NATURAL  AND  SOCIAL  SCIENCES  169 

it  was  once  confidently  assumed  that  the  race  was  to  emerge 
from  mythical  da^^^l  and  metaphysical  shadows  into  the  noon- 
day of  positive  knowledge.  Rather,  it  would  appear  that  at 
this  point  a  part  of  the  human  race  plunged  into  a  new  era 
of  myth-making  and  fetish  worship — the  homage  to  the  fetish 
of  law.  Even  the  great  minds  do  not  altogether  escape.  '  Fact 
I  know  and  law  I  know,'  says  Huxley,  with  a  faint  sugges- 
tion of  sacred  rhetoric.  But  surely  we  do  not  know  law  in  the 
same  sense  in  which  we  know  fact.  If  there  are  no  causes 
among  our  facts,  then  we  do  not  know  anything  about  the 
laws.  If  we  do  know  laws  it  is  because  we  assume  causes. 
If,  in  the  language  of  rational  beings,  laws  of  nature  are  to 
be  spoken  of  as  self-existent  and  independent  of  the  pheno- 
mena which  they  are  said  to  govern,  such  language  must  be 
merely  analogous  to  the  manner  in  which  we  often  speak  of 
the  civil  law.  We  say  the  law  does  that  which  we  know  the 
executive  does.  But  the  thorough-going  naturalist  cast  off 
these  implications  as  the  last  rags  of  a  creed  outworn.  Physi- 
cists were  fond  of  talking  of  the  movement  of  molecules,  just 
as  the  ancient  astrologers  imagined  that  the  planets  had  souls 
and  guided  their  own  courses.  We  had  supposed  that  this 
was  anthropomorphism.  In  truth,  this  would-be  scientific 
mode  of  speech  is  as  anthropomorphic  as  is  the  cosmogony 
of  Hesiod,  only  on  a  smaller  scale.  Primitive  religion 
ascribed  life  to  everything  of  which  it  talked.  Polytheism 
in  religion  and  independent  forces  and  self-existent  laws  in 
science  are  thus  upon  a  par.  The  gods  many  and  lords  many, 
so  amenable  to  concrete  presentation  in  poetrj^  and  art,  have 
given  place  to  one  Supreme  Being.  So  also  light,  heat,  and 
other  natural  agencies,  palpable  and  ready  to  hand  for  the 
explanation  of  everything,  in  the  myth-making  period  of 
science  which  living  men  can  still  remember,  have  by  this 
time  paled.  They  have  become  simply  various  manifestations 
of  one  underlying  spiritual  energy,  which  is  indeed  beyond 
our  perception.^  When  Comte  said  that  the  universe  could, 
not  rest  upon  will,  because  then  it  would  be  arbitrary,  in-/ 
calculable,  subject  to  caprice,  one  feels  the  humour  and  pathos 
1  Ward,  Naturalism  and  Agnosticism,  vol.  ii.  p.  248. 


170    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

of  it.  Comte's  experience  with  will,  his  own  and  that  of 
others,  had  evidently  been  too  largely  of  that  sad  sort.  Real 
freedom  consists  in  conformity  to  what  ought  to  be.  In 
God,  whom  we  conceive  as  perfect,  this  conformity  is  com- 
plete. With  us  it  remains  an  ideal.  Were  we  the  creatures 
of  a  blind  mechanical  necessity  there  could  be  no  talk  of  ideal 
standards  and  no  meaning  in  reason  at  all. 


Evolution 

In  the  progress  of  the  thought  of  the  generation,  say,  from 
1870  to  the  present  day,  the  conception  of  evolution  has  been 
much  changed.  The  doctrine  of  evolution  has  itself  been! 
largely  evolved  within  that  period.  The  application  of  it 
has  become  familiar  in  fields  of  which  there  was  at  first  no 
thought.  The  bearing  of  the  acceptance  of  it  upon  religion 
has  been  seen  to  be  quite  dififerent  from  that  which  was  at 
first  supposed.  The  advocacy  of  the  doctrine  was  at  first 
associated  with  the  claims  of  naturalism  or  positivism.  Wider 
applications  of  the  doctrine  and  deeper  insight  into  its  mean- 
ing have  done  away  with  this  misunderstanding.  Evolution, 
as  originally  understood,  was  as  far  as  possible  from  suggesting 
anything  mechanical.  By  the  term  was  meant  primarily 
the  gradual  unfolding  of  a  living  germ  from  its  embryonic 
begirming  to  its  mature  and  final  stage.  This  adult  form  was 
regarded  not  merely  as  the  goal  actually  reached  through 
successive  stages  of  growth.  It  was  conceived  as  the  end 
aimed  at,  and  achieved  through  the  force  of  some  vital  or 
ideal  principle  shaping  the  plastic  material  and  directing  the 
process  of  growth.  In  short,  evolution  implied  ideal  ends 
controlling  physical  means.  Yet  we  find  with  Spencer,  as 
prevailingly  also  with  others  in  the  study  of  the  natural 
sciences,  the  ideas  of  end  and  of  cause  looked  at  askance. 
They  are  regarded  as  outside  the  pale  of  the  natural  sciences. 
In  a  very  definite  sense  that  is  true.  The  logical  consequence 
of  this  admission  should  be  merely  the  recognition  that  the 
idea  of  evolution  as  developed  in  the  natural  sciences  can- 
not be  the  whole  idea. 


v.]  NATURAL  AND  SOCIAL  SCIENCES  171 

The  entire  history  of  anything,  Spencer  tells  us,  must 
include  its  appearance  out  of  the  imperceptible,  and  its 
disappearance  again  into  the  imperceptible.  Be  it  a  single 
object,  or  the  whole  universe,  an  account  which  begins  with 
it  in  a  concrete  form,  or  leaves  off  with  its  concrete  form, 
is  incomplete.  He  uses  a  familiar  instance,  that  of  a  cloud 
appearing  when  vapour  drifts  over  a  cold  mountain  top,  and 
again  disappearing  when  it  emerges  into  warmer  air.  The 
cloud  emerges  from  the  imperceptible  as  heat  is  dissipated. 
It  is  dissolved  again  as  heat  is  absorbed  and  the  watery 
particles  evaporate.  Spencer  esteems  this  an  analogue  of 
the  appearance  of  the  universe  itself,  according  to  the  nebular  1 
hypothesis.  Yet  assuredly,  as  the  cl  jud  presupposes  vapours 
which  had  previously  condensed,  and  the  vapour  clouds  that 
had  previously  evaporated,  and  as  clouds  dissolve  in  one  place 
even  at  the  moment  that  they  are  forming  in  another,  so  we 
are  told  of  nebulae  which  are  in  every  phase  of  advance  or  of 
decline.  To  ask  which  was  first,  solid  masses  or  nebulous 
haze,  is  much  like  recurring  to  the  riddle  of  the  hen  and  the 
egg.  Still,  we  are  told,  we  have  but  to  extend  our  thought 
beyond  this  emergence  and  subsidence  of  sidereal  systems, 
of  continents,  nations,  men,  to  find  a  permanent  totality 
made  up  of  transient  individuals  in  every  stage  of  change. 
The  physical  assumption  with  which  Spencer  sets  out  is 
that  the  mass  of  the  universe  and  its  energy  are  fixed  in] 
quantity.  All  the  phenomena  of  evolution  are  included  in 
the  conservation  of  this  matter  and  force. 

Besides  the  criticism  which  was  offered  above,  that  the  mere 
law  of  the  persistence  of  force  does  not  initiate  our  series, 
there  is  a  further  objection.  Even  within  the  series,  once  it 
has  been  started,  this  law  of  the  persistence  of  force  is  solely 
a  quantitative  law.  WTien  energy  is  transformed  there  is  an 
equivalence  between  the  new  form  and  the  old.  Of  the 
reasons  for  the  direction  evolution  takes,  for  the  permanence 
of  that  direction  once  it  has  been  taken,  so  that  the  sequence 
of  forms  is  a  progression,  the  explication  of  a  latent  nature 
— of  all  this,  the  mere  law  of  the  persistence  of  force  gives  us 
no  explanation  whatever.     The  change  at  random  from  one 


172     HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT   [ch. 

form  of  manifestation  to  another  might  be  a  striking  illus- 
tration of  the  law  of  the  persistence  of  force,  but  it  would  be 
the  contradiction  of  evolution.  The  very  notion  of  evolution 
is  that  of  the  sequence  of  forms,  so  that  something  is  expressed 
or  achieved.  That  achievement  implies  more  than  the  mere 
force.  Or  rather,  it  involves  a  quality  of  the  force  with  which 
the  language  of  mechanism  does  not  reckon.  It  assumes  the 
idea  which  gives  direction  to  the  force,  an  ideal  quality  of 
the  force. 

Unquestionably  that  which  men  sought  to  be  rid  of  was  / 
the  idea  of  purpose  in  nature,  in  the  old  sense  of  design  in  the  j 
mind  of  God,  external  to  the  material  universe,  of  force 
exerted  upon  nature  from  without,  so  as  to  cause  nature  to 
conform  to  the  design  of  its  '  Great  Original,'  in  Addison's 
high  phrase.  In  this  effort,  however,  the  reducing  of  all  to  mere 
force  and  permutation  of  force,  not  merely  explains  nothing, 
but  contradicts  facts  which  stare  us  in  the  face.  It  deprives 
evolution  of  the  quahty  which  makes  it  evolution.  To  put  in 
this  incongruous  quality  at  the  beginning,  because  we  find 
it  necessary  at  the  end,  is,  to  say  the  least,  naive.  To  deny 
that  we  have  put  it  in,  to  insist  that  in  the  marvellous 
sequence  we  have  only  an  illustration  of  mechanism  and  of 
conservation  of  force,  is  perverse.  We  passed  through  an 
era  in  which  some  said  that  they  did  not  believe  in  God ; 
everything  was  accounted  for  by  evolution.  In  so  far  as  they 
meant  that  they  did  not  believe  in  the  God  of  deism  and  of 
much  traditional  theology,  they  did  not  stand  alone  in  this 
claim.  In  so  far  as  they  meant  by  evolution  mere  mechanism, 
they  explained  nothing  and  destroyed  the  notion  of  evolution 
besides.  In  so  far  as  they  meant  more  than  mere  mechanism, 
they  lapsed  into  the  company  of  the  scientific  myth-makers 
to  whom  we  alluded  above.  They  attributed  to  their  ab- 
straction, evolution,  qualities  which  other  people  found  in 
the  forms  of  the  universe  viewed  as  the  manifestation  of  an 
immanent  God.  Only  by  so  doing  were  they  able  to  ascribe 
to  evolution  that  which  other  people  describe  as  the  work 
of  God.  At  this  level  the  controversy  becomes  one  simply 
about  words. 


v.]  NATURAL  AND  SOCIAL  SCIENCES  173 

Of  course,  the  great  illumination  as  to  the  meaning  of 
evolution  has  come  with  its  application  to  many  fields  besides 
the  physical.  Darwin  was  certainly  the  great  inaugurator  of 
the  evolutionary  movement  in  England.  Still,  Darwin's 
problem  was  strictly  limited.  The  impression  is  widespread 
that  the  biological  evolutionary  theories  were  first  developed, 
and  furnished  the  basis  for  the  others.  Yet  both  Hegel  and 
Comte,  not  to  speak  of  Schelling,  were  far  more  interested) 
in  the  intellectual  and  historical,  the  ethical  and  social  aspects 
of  the  question.  Both  Hegel  and  Comte  were,  whether  rightly 
or  wrongly,  rather  contemptuous  of  the  appeal  to  biology  and 
organic  life.  Both  had  the  sense  that  they  used  a  great  figure 
of  speech  when  they  spoke  of  society  as  an  organism,  and 
compared  the  working  of  institutions  to  biological  functions. 
This  is  indeed  the  question.  It  is  a  question  over  which 
Spencer  sets  himself  lightly.  He  passes  back  and  forth 
between  organic  evolution  and  the  ethical,  economic,  and 
social  movements  which  are  described  by  the  same  term,  as 
if  we  were  in  possession  of  a  perfectly  safe  analogy,  or  rather 
as  if  we  were  assured  of  an  identical  principle.  Much  that  is 
already  archaic  in  Spencer's  economic  and  social,  his  historical 
and  ethical,  not  to  say  his  religious,  chapters  is  due  to  the 
influence  of  this  fact.  Of  his  own  mind  it  was  true  that  he 
had  come  to  the  doctrine  of  evolution  from  the  physical  side. 
He  brought  to  his  other  subjects  a  more  or  less  developed 
method  of  operating  with  the  conception.  He  never  fully 
realised  how  new  subjects  would  alter  the  method  and  trans- 
form the  conception.  Spencerian  evolution  is  an  assertion 
of  the  all-sufficiency  of  natural  law.  The  authority  of  con- 
science is  but  the  experience  of  law-abiding  and  dutiful 
generations  flowing  in  our  veins.  The  public  weal  has  hold 
over  us,  because  the  happiness  and  misery  of  past  ages  are 
inherited  by  us. 

It  marked  a  great  departure  when  Huxley  began  vigorously 
to  dissent  from  these  views.  According  to  him  evolutionary 
science  has  done  nothing  for  ethics.  Men  become  ethical 
only  as  they  set  themselves  against  the  principles  embodied 
in  the  evolutionary  process  of  the  world.     Evolution  is  the 


174    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT   [ch. 

struggle  for  existence.  It  is  preposterous  to  say  that  man 
became  good  by  succeeding  in  the  struggle  for  existence. 
Instead  of  the  old  single  movement,  as  in  Spencer,  straight 
from  the  nebula  to  the  saint,  Huxley  has  place  for  suffering. 
Suffering  is  most  intense  in  man  precisely  under  conditions 
most  essential  to  the  evolution  of  his  nobler  powers.  The 
loss  of  ease  or  money  may  be  gain  in  character.  The  cosmical 
process  is  not  only  full  of  pain.  It  is  full  of  mercilessness  and 
of  wickedness.  Good  has  been  evolved,  but  so  has  evil.  The 
fittest  may  have  survived.  There  is  no  guarantee  that  they 
are  the  best.  The  continual  struggle  against  our  fellows 
poisons  our  higher  life.  It  will  hardly  do  to  say  with  Huxley 
that  the  ethical  struggle  is  the  reverse  of  the  cosmical  process,  f 
Nevertheless,  we  have  here  a  most  interesting  transformation  / 
in  thought. 

These  ideas  and  principles,  as  is  well  known,  were  elabo- 
rated and  advanced  upon  in  a  very  popular  book,  Drum- 
mond's  Ascent  of  Man,  1894.  Even  the  title  was  a  happy 
and  suggestive  one.  Struggle  for  life  is  a  fact,  but  it  is  not 
the  whole  fact.  It  is  balanced  by  the  struggle  for  the  life 
of  others.  This  latter  reaches  far  down  into  the  levels  of^ 
what  we  call  brute  life.  Its  divinest  reach  is  only  the  fulfil^ 
ment  of  the  real  nature  of  humanity.  It  is  the  living  with 
men  which  develops  the  moral  in  man.  The  prolongation  of 
infancy  in  the  higher  species  has  had  to  do  with  the  develop- 
ment of  moral  nature.  So  only  that  we  hold  a  sufficiently 
deep  view  of  reason,  provided  we  see  clearly  that  reason 
transforms,  perfects,  makes  new  what  we  inherit  from  the 
beast,  we  need  not  fear  for  morality,  though  it  should  univer- 
sally be  taught  that  morality  came  into  being  by  the  slow  and 
gradual  fashioning  of  brute  impulse. 

Benjamin  Kidd  in  his  Social  Evolution,  1895,  has  reverted 
again  to  extreme  Darwinism  in  morals  and  sociology.  The 
law  is  that  of  unceasing  struggle.  Reason  does  not  teach  us 
to  moderate  the  struggle.  It  but  sharpens  the  conflict.  All  i 
religions  are  prseter- rational,  Christianity  most  of  all,  in  being 
the  most  altruistic.  Kidd,  not  without  reason,  comments 
bitterly  upon  Spencer's  Utopia,  the  passage  of  militarism  into 


v.]  NATURAL  AND  SOCIAL  SCIENCES  175 

industrialism.     The  struggle  in  industrialism  is  fiercer  than 
ever.    Reason  affects  the  animal  nature  of  man  for  the  worse. 
Clearly  conscious  of  what  he  is  doing,  man  objects  to  sacrific- 
ing himself  for  his  family  or  tribe.    Instinct  might  lead  an  ape 
to  do  that.     Intelligence  warns  a  man  against  it.     Reason  is  i 
cruel  beyond  anything  dreamed  of  in  the  beast.     That  portion/ 
of  the  community  which  loves  to  hear  the  abuse  of  reason,' 
rejoiced  to  hear  this  phrase.     They  rejoiced  when  they  heard 
that  religion  was  the  only  remedy,  and  that  religion  was  ultra- j 
rational,    contra-rational,   supernatural,   in   this   new   sense. 
How  one  comes  by  it,  or  how  one  can  rationally  justify  the 
yielding  of  allegiance  to  it,  is  not  clear.     One  must  indeed 
have  the  will  to  believe  if  one  believes  on  these  terms. 

These  again  are  but  examples.  They  convey  but  a  super- 
ficial impression  of  the  effort  to  apply  the  conception  of 
evolution  to  the  moral  and  religious  hfe  of  man.  All  this  has 
taken  place,  of  course,  in  a  far  larger  setting — that  of  the 
endeavour  to  elaborate  the  evolutionary  view  of  politics  and 
of  the  state,  of  economics  and  of  trade,  of  social  life  and  in- 
stitutions, of  culture  and  civilisation  in  every  aspect.  This 
elaboration  and  reiteration  of  the  doctrine  of  evolution  some- 
times wearies  us.  It  is  but  the  unwearied  following  of  the 
main  clue  to  the  riddle  of  the  universe  which  the  age  has 
given  us.  It  is  nothing  more  and  nothing  less  than  the 
endeavour  to  apprehend  the  ideal  life,  no  longer  as  something 
held  out  to  us,  set  up  before  us,  but  also  as  something  working 
within  us,  realising  itself  through  us  and  among  us.  To  deny 
the  affinity  of  this  with  religion  would  be  fatuous  and  also 
futile.  Temporarily,  at  least,  and  to  many  interests  of  re- 
ligion, it  would  be  fatal. 

Miracles 

It  must  be  evident  that  the  total  view  of  the  universe 
which  the  acceptance  of  the  doctrine  of  evolution  implies,  has 
had  effect  in  the  diminution  of  the  acuteness  of  the  question 
concerning  miracles.  It  certainly  gives  to  that  question  a 
new  form.     A  philosophy  which  asserts  the  constant  presence 


176     HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT   [ch. 

of  God  in  nature  and  the  whole  Hfe  of  the  world,  a  criticism  \ 
which  has  given  us  a  truer  notion  of  the  documents  which  j 
record  the  biblical  miracles,  the  reverent  sense  of  ignorance| 
which   our   increasing    knowledge   affords,    have    tended    toj 
diminish  the  dogmatism  of  men  on  either  side  of  the  debate. 
The  contention  on  behalf  of  the  miracle,  in  the  traditional 
sense   of  the  word,   once   seemed   the   bulwark  of  positive  \ 
religion,  the  distinction  between  the  man  who  was  satisfied 
with  a  naturalistic  explanation  of  the  universe  and  one  whose 
devout  soul  asked  for  something  more.     On  the  other  hand, 
the  contention  against  the  miracle  appeared  to  be  a  necessary 
corollary  of  the  notion  of  a  law  and  order  which  are  inviolable 
throughout    the    universe.     Furthermore,    many    men    have 
come   of    themselves   to  the  conclusion  for  which  Schleier- 
macher  long  ago  contended.     Whatever  may  be  theoretically  I 
determined  concerning  miracles,  yet  the  miracle  can  never  I 
again  be  regarded  as  among  the  foundations  of  faith.     This  is 
for  the  simplest  of  reasons.     The  belief  in  a  miracle  presup- 
poses faith.     It  is  the  faith  which  sustains  the  miracle,  and 
not  the  miracle  the  faith.      Jesus  is  to  men  the  incompar- 
able moral  and  spiritual  magnitude  which  he  is,  not  on  the  , 
evidence  of  some   unparalleled   things  physical  which  it  is 
alleged  he  did.      Quite  the  contrary,   it  is  the  immediate 
impression  of  the  moral  and  spiritual  wonder  which  Jesus  is, 
that  prepares  what  credence  we  can  gather  for  the  wonders 
which  it  is  declared  he  did.     This  is  a  transfer  of  emphasis, 
a  redistribution  of  weight  in  the  structure  of  our  thought, 
the  relief  of  which  many  appreciate  who  have  not  reasoned 
the  matter  through  for  themselves. 

Schleiermacher  had  said,  and  Herrmann  and  others  repeat 
the  thought,  that,  as  the  Christian  faith  finds  in  Christ  the 
highest  revelation,  miracles  may  reasonably  be  expected  of  j 
him.  Nevertheless,  he  adds,  these  deeds  can  be  called 
miracles  or  esteemed  extraordinary,  only  as  containing 
something  which  was  beyond  contemporary  knowledge  of  the 
regular  and  orderly  connexion  between  physical  and  spiritual 
life.  Therewith,  it  must  be  evident,  that  the  notion  of  the 
miraculous  is  fundamentally  changed.     So  it  comes  to  pass 


v.]  NATURAL  AND  SOCIAL  SCIENCES  177 

that  we  liave  a  book  lilie  Mackintosh's  Natural  History  of  the  I 
Christian  Religion,  1894,  whose  avowed  purpose  is  to  do  away 
^\dth  the  miraculous  altogether.    Of  course,  the  author  means 
the  traditional  notion  of  the  miraculous,  according  to  which  it 
is  the  essence  of  arbitrariness  and  the  negation  of  law.     It  is 
not  that  he  has  less  sense  for  the  divine  life  of  the  w^orld,  or  for 
the  quality  of  Christianity  as  revelation.     On  the  other  hand, 
we  have  a  book  like  Percy  Gardner's  Exploratio  Evangelica, 
1839.      With  the  most  searching  criticism  of  the  narratives 
of  some  miracles,  there  is  reverent  confession,  on  the  author's 
part,  that  he  is  baffled  by  the  reports  of  others.     There  is 
recognition  of  unknown  possibilities  in  the  case  of  a  character  I 
like  that  of  Jesus.     It  is  not  that  Gardner  has  a  less  stringent  \. 
sense   of  fact  and   of    the  inexorableness  of  law  than  has 
Mackintosh  or  an  ardent  physicist.     The  problem  is  reduced 
to  that  of  the  choice  of  expression.     We  are  not  able  to  with- 
hold a  justification  of  the  scholar  who  declares  :  We  must  not 
say  that  we  beUeve  in  the  miraculous.     This  language  is  sure  I 
to  be  appropriated  by  those  who  still  take  their  departure! 
from  the  old  dualism,  now  hopelessly  obsolete,  for  which  a  \ 
breach  of  the  law  of  nature  was  the  cro^\'ning  evidence  of  the 
love  of  God.     On  the  other  hand,  the  assertion  that  we  do 
not  beheve  in  the  miraculous  will  easily  be  taken  by  some 
to  mean  the  denial  of  the  whole  sense  of  the  nearness  and 
power  and  love  of  God,  and  of  the  unimagined  possibilities 
of  such  a  moral  nature  as  was  that  of  Christ.     It  is  to  be 
repeated  that  we  have  here  a  mere  difference  as  to  terms. 
The  debate  is  no  longer  about  ideas. 

The  traditional  notion  of  the  miracle  arose  out  of  the  con- 
fusion of  two  series  of  ideas  which,  in  the  last  analysis,  have 
nothing  to  do  with  each  other.  On  the  one  hand,  there  is 
the  conception  of  law  and  order,  of  cause  and  effect,  of  the 
unbroken  connexion  of  nature.  On  the  other  hand  is  the 
thought  of  the  divine  purpose  in  the  life  of  the  world  and  of 
the  individual.  By  the  aid  of  that  first  sequence  of  thoughts 
we  find  ourselves  in  the  universe  and  interpret  the  world  of 
fact  to  ourselves.  Yet  in  the  other  sequence  lies  the  essence 
of  religion.     The  two  sequences  may  perfectly  well  coexist 

M 


178    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

in  the  same  mind.  Out  of  the  attempt  to  combine  them 
nothing  clear  or  satisfying  can  issue.  If  one  should  be, 
to-day,  brought  face  to  face  with  a  fact  which  was  alleged  to 
be  a  miracle,  his  instinctive  effort  would  be,  nevertheless,  to 
seek  to  find  its  cause,  to  establish  for  it  a  connexion  in  the 
natural  order.  In  the  ancient  world  men  did  not  argue  thus, 
nor  in  the  modern  world  until  less  than  two  hundred  years  ago. 
The  presumption  of  the  order  of  nature  had  not  assumed 
for  them  the  proportions  which  it  has  for  us.  For  us  it  is 
overwhelming,  self-evident.  Therewith  is  not  involved  that 
we  lack  belief  in  a  divine  purpose  for  the  world  and  for  the 
individual  life. 

We  do  not  deny  that  there  are  laws  of  nature  of  which  we 
have  no  experience,  facts  which  we  do  not  understand,  events 
which,  if  they  should  occur,  would  stand  before  us  as  unique. 
Still,  the  decisive  thing  is,  that  in  face  of  such  an  event,  instead 
of  viewing  it  quite  simply  as  a  divine  intervention,  as  men 
used  to  do,  we,  with  equal  simphcity  and  no  less  devoutness, 
conceive  that  same  event  as  only  an  illustration  of  a  connexion 
in  nature  which  we  do  not  understand.  There  is  no  inherent 
reason  why  we  may  not  understand  it.  When  we  do  under-  \ 
stand  it,  there  will  be  nothing  more  about  it  that  is  con-  ! 
ceivably  miraculous.  There  will  be  then  no  longer  a  unique 
quality  attaching  to  the  event.  Therewith  ends  the  possible 
significance  of  such  an  event  as  proof  of  divine  intervention 
for  our  especial  help.  We  have  but  a  connexion  in  nature 
such  that,  whether  understood  or  not,  if  it  were  to  recur, 
the  event  would  recur. 

The  miracles  which  are  related  in  the  Scripture  may  be 
divided  for  our  consideration  into  three  classes.  To  the  first! 
class  belong  most  of  those  which  are  related  in  the  Old  Testa-( 
ment,  but  some  also  which  are  conspicuous  in  the  New 
Testament,  They  are,  in  some  cases,  the  poetical  and  imagina-J 
tive  representation  of  the  profoundest  religious  ideas.  So 
soon  as  one  openly  concedes  this,  when  there  is  no  longer 
any  necessity  either  to  attack  or  to  defend  the  miracle  in 
question,  one  is  in  a  position  to  acknowledge  how  deep  and 
wonderful  the  thoughts  often  are  and  how  beautiful  the  form 


v.]  NATURAL  AND  SOCIAL  SCIENCES  179 

in  which  they  are  conveyed.  It  is  through  imagination  and 
symbohsm  that  we  are  able  to  convey  the  subtlest  meanings 
which  we  have.  Still  more  was  this  the  case  with  men  of  an 
earlier  age.  In  the  second  place,  the  narratives  of  miracles  j 
are,  some  of  them,  of  such  a  sort  that  we  may  say  that  an/ 
event  or  circumstance  in  nature  has  been  obviously  appre- 
hended in  naive  fashion.  This  by  no  means  forbids  us  to 
interpret  that  same  event  in  quite  a  different  way.  The  men 
of  former  time,  exactly  in  proportion  as  they  had  less  sense 
of  the  order  of  nature  than  have  we,  so  were  they  also  far 
readier  to  assume  the  immediate  forthputting  of  the  power 
of  God.  This  was  true  not  merely  of  the  uneducated.  It  is 
difficult,  or  even  impossible,  for  us  to  find  out  what  the  event 
was.  Fact  and  apprehension  are  inextricably  interwoven. 
That  which  really  happened  is  concealed  from  us  by  the  tale 
which  had  intended  to  reveal  it.  In  the  third  place,  there 
are  many  cases  in  the  history  of  Jesus,  and  some  in  that  of  the  ' 
apostles  and  prophets,  in  which  that  which  is  related  moves 
in  the  borderland  between  body  and  soul,  spirit  and  matter, 
the  region  of  the  influence  of  will,  one's  own  or  that  of  another, 
over  physical  conditions.  Concerning  such  cases  we  are  dis- 
posed, far  more  than  were  men  even  a  few  years  ago,  to  concede 
that  there  is  much  that  is  by  no  means  yet  investigated, 
and  the  soundest  judgment  we  can  form  is  far  from  being 
sure.  Even  if  we  recognise  to  the  full  the  lamentable  resur- 
gence of  outworn  superstitions  and  stupidities,  which  again 
pass  current  among  us  for  an  unhappy  moment,  if  we  detect 
the  questionable  or  manifestly  evil  consequences  of  certain 
uses  made  or  alleged  of  psychic  influence,  yet  still  we  are 
not  always  in  a  position  to  say,  with  certainty,  what  is  true 
in  tales  of  healing  which  we  hear  in  our  own  day.  There  are 
certain  of  the  statements  concerning  Jesus'  healing  power 
and  action  which  are  absolutely  baffling.  They  can  be 
eliminated  from  the  narrative  only  by  a  procedure  which 
might  just  as  well  eliminate  the  narrative.  In  many  of  the 
narratives  there  may  be  much  that  is  true.  In  some  all 
may  be  as  related.  In  Jesus'  time,  on  the  witness  of  the  Scrip- 
ture itself,  it  was  assumed  as  something  no  one  questioned, 


180    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

that  miraculous  deeds  were  performed,  not  alone  by  Jesus 
and  the  apostles,  but  by  many  others,  and  not  always  even 
bj^  the  good.  Such  deeds  were  performed  through  the  power  of 
evil  spirits  as  well  as  by  the  power  of  God.  To  imagine  that 
the  working  of  miracles  proved  that  Jesus  came  from  God, 
is  the  most  patent  importation  of  a  modern  apologetic  notion 
into  the  area  of  ancient  thought.  We  must  remember  that 
Jesus  himself  laid  no  great  weight  upon  the  miracles  which 
we  assume  that  he  believed  he  wrought,  and  some  of  which 
we  may  believe  that  he  did  work.  Many  he  performed  v/ith 
hesitation  and  desired  so  far  as  possible  to  conceal. 

Even  if  we  were  in  a  position  at  one  point  or  another  in 
the  life  of  Jesus  to  defend  the  traditional  assumptions  con- 
cerning the  miraculous,  yet  it  must  be  evident  how  opposed 
it  is  to  right  reason,  to  lay  stress  on  the  abstract  necessity 
of  belief  in  the  miraculous.  The  traditional  conception  of 
the  miraculous  is  done  away  for  us.  This  is  not  at  all  by  the 
fact  that  we  are  in  a  position  to  say  with  Matthew  Arnold  : 
'  The  trouble  with  miracles  is  that  they  never  happen.' 
We  do  not  know  enough  to  say  that.  To  stake  all  on  the 
assertion  of  the  impossibility  of  so-called  miracles  is  as  foolish 
as  to  stake  much  on  the  affirmation  of  their  actuality.  The 
connexion  of  nature  is  only  an  induction.  This  can  never 
be  complete.  The  real  question  is  both  more  complex  and 
also  more  simple.  The  question  is  whether,  even  if  an  event, 
the  most  unparalleled  of  those  related  in  the  Gospels  or  outside 
of  them,  should  be  proved  before  our  very  eyes  to  have  taken 
place,  the  question  is  whether  we  should  believe  it  to  have 
been  a  miracle  in  the  traditional  sense,  an  event  in  which 
the  actual — not  the  known,  but  the  possible — order  of  nature 
had  been  broken  through,  and  in  the  old  sense,  God  had 
arbitrarily  supervened. 

Allowed  that  the  event  were,  in  our  own  experience  and  in 
the  known  experience  of  the  race,  unparalleled,  yet  it  would 
never  occur  to  us  to  suppose  but  that  there  was  a  law  of 
this  case,  also,  a  connexion  in  nature  in  which,  as  work  of 
God,  it  occurred,  and  in  which,  if  the  conditions  were  repeated, 
it  would  recur.     We  should  unceasingly  endeavour  through 


v.]  NATURAL  AND  SOCIAL  SCIENCES  181 

observation,  reflexion,  and  new  knowledge,  to  show  how  we 
might  subordinate  this  event  in  the  connexion  of  nature 
which  w^e  assume.  We  should  feel  that  we  knew  more,  and 
not  less,  of  God,  if  we  should  succeed.  And  if  our  effort 
should  prove  altogether  futile,  we  should  be  no  less  sure  that 
such  natural  connexion  exists.  This  is  because  nature  is 
for  us  the  revelation  of  the  divine.  The  divine,  we  assume, 
has  a  natural  order  of  working.  Its  inviolability  is  the 
divinest  thing  about  it.  It  is  through  this  sequence  of  ideas 
that  we  are  in  a  position  to  deny,  not  facts  which  may  bo 
inexplicable,  but  the  traditional  conception  of  the  miracle. 
For  surely  no  one  needs  to  be  told  that  this  is  not  the 
conception  of  the  miracle  which  has  existed  in  the  minds 
of  the  devout,  and  equally  of  the  undevout,  from  the  be- 
ginning of  thought  until  the  present  day. 

However,  there  is  notliing  in  all  of  this  which  hinders  us 
from  believing  with  a  full  heart  in  the  love  and  grace  and 
care  of  God,  in  his  holy  and  redeeming  purpose  for  mankind 
and  for  the  individual.  It  is  true  that  this  belief  cannot  any 
longer  retain  its  naive  and  childish  form.  It  is  true  that  it 
demands  of  a  man  far  more  of  moral  force,  of  ethical  and 
spiritual  mastery,  of  insight  and  firm  will,  to  sustain  the 
belief  in  the  purpose  of  God  for  himself  and  for  all  men,  when 
a  man  believes  that  he  sees  and  feels  God  only  in  and  through 
nature  and  history,  through  personal  consciousness  and 
the  personal  consciousness  of  Jesus.  It  is  true  that  it  has, 
apparently,  been  easier  for  men  to  think  of  God  as  outside 
and  above  his  world,  and  of  themselves  as  separated  from 
their  fellows  by  his  special  providence.  It  is  more  difiicult, 
through  glad  and  intelligent  subjection  to  all  laws  of  nature 
and  of  history,  to  achieve  the  education  of  one's  spirit,  to 
make  good  one's  inner  deliverance  from  the  world,  to  aid 
others  in  the  same  struggle  and  to  set  them  on  their  way  to 
God.  Men  grow  uncertain  within  themselves,  because  they 
say  that  traditional  religion  has  apprehended  the  matter  in  a 
different  way.  This  is  true.  It  is  also  misleading.  What- 
ever miracles  Jesus  may  have  performed,  no  one  can  say  that 
he  performed  them  to  make  life  easier  for  himself,  to  escape 


182     HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT  [ch. 

the  common  lot,  to  avoid  struggle,  to  evade  suffering  and 
disgraceful  death.  On  the  contrary,  in  genuine  human 
self -distrust,  but  also  in  genuine  heroism,  he  gave  himself 
to  his  vocation,  accepting  all  that  went  therewith,  and 
finished  the  work  of  God  which  he  had  made  his  own.  This 
is  the  more  wonderful  because  it  lay  so  much  nearer  to  him 
than  it  can  lie  to  us,  to  pray  for  special  evidence  of  the  love 
of  God  and  to  set  his  faith  on  the  receiving  of  it.  He  had 
not  the  conception  of  the  relation  of  God  to  nature  and 
history  which  we  have. 

We  may  well  view  the  modern  tendency  to  belief  in  healings 
through  prayer,  suggestion  and  faith,  as  an  intelligible,  an  in- 
teresting, and  in  part,  a  touching  manifestation.  Of  course 
there  is  mingled  with  it  much  dense  ignorance,  some  supersti- 
tion and  even  deception.  Yet  behind  such  a  phenomenon  there 
is  meaning.  Men  of  this  mind  make  earnest  with  the  thought 
that  God  cares  for  them.  Without  that  thought  there  is  no 
religion.  They  have  been  taught  to  find  the  evidence  of  God's 
love  and  care  in  the  unusual.  They  are  quite  logical.  It  has 
been  a  weak  point  of  the  traditional  belief  that  men  have 
said  that  in  the  time  of  Christ  there  were  miracles,  but  since 
that  time,  no  more.  Why  not,  if  we  can  only  in  spirit  come 
near  to  Christ  and  God  ?  They  are  quite  logical  also  in  that 
they  have  repudiated  modem  science.  To  be  sure,  no  in- 
considerable part  of  them  use  the  word  science  continually. 
But  the  very  esoteric  quality  of  their  science  is  that  it  means 
something  which  no  one  else  ever  understood  that  it  meant. 
In  reality  their  breach  with  science  is  more  radical  than  their 
breach  with  Christianity.  They  feel  the  contradiction  in 
which  most  men  are  bound  fast,  who  will  let  science  have  its 
way,  up  to  a  certain  point,  but  who  beyond  that,  would  retain 
the  miracle.  Dimly  the  former  appreciate  that  this  position 
is  impossible.  They  leave  it  to  other  men  to  become  altogether 
scientific  if  they  \^dsh.  For  themselves  they  prefer  to  remain 
religious.  What  a  revival  of  ancient  superstitions  they  have 
brought  to  pass,  is  obvious.  Still  we  shall  never  get  beyond 
such  adventurous  and  preposterous  endeavours  to  rescue  that 
which  is  inestimably  precious  in  religion,  until  the  false  anti- 


v.]  NATURAL  AND  SOCIAL  SCIENCES  183 

thesis  between  reason  and  faith,  the  lying  contradiction 
between  the  providence  of  God  and  the  order  of  nature,  is  over- 
come. Some  science  mankind  apparently  must  have.  Alto- 
gether without  religion  the  majority,  it  would  seem,  will 
never  be.  How  these  are  related,  the  one  to  the  other,  not 
every  one  sees.  Many  attempt  their  admixture  in  unhappy 
ways.  They  might  try  letting  them  stand  in  peace  as  comple- 
ment and  supplement  the  one  to  the  other.  Still  better,  they 
may  perhaps  some  day  see  how  each  penetrates,  permeates 
and  glorifies  the  other. 


The  Social  Sciences 

We  said  that  the  last  generation  had  been  characterised 
by  an  unexampled  concentration  of  intellectual  interest  upon 
problems  presented  by  the  social  sciences.  With  this  has 
gone  an  unrivalled  earnestness  in  the  interpretation  of  religion 
as  a  social  force.  The  great  religious  enthusiasm  has  been  j 
that  of  the  application  of  Christianity  to  the  social  aspects  1 
of  life.  This  effort  has  furnished  most  of  the  watchwords  of 
religious  teaching.  It  has  laid  vigorous,  not  to  say  violent,  I 
hands  on  religious  institutions.  It  has  given  a  new  per- 
spective to  effort  and  a  new  impulse  to  devotion.  The  re- 
vival of  religion  in  our  age  has  taken  this  direction,  with  an 
exclusiveness  which  has  had  both  good  and  evil  consequences. 
Yet,  before  all,  it  should  be  made  clear  that  it  constitutes 
a  religious  revival.  Some  are  deploring  the  prostrate  con- 
dition of  spiritual  interests.  If  one  judged  only  by  conven- 
tional standards,  they  have  much  evidence  upon  their  side. 
Some  are  seeking  to  galvanise  religious  life  by  recurrence  to  i 
evangelistic  methods  successfully  operative  half  a  century 
ago.  The  outstanding  fact  is  that  the  age  shows  immense 
religious  vitality,  so  soon  as  one  concedes  that  it  must  be 
allowed  to  show  its  vitality  in  its  own  way.  It  is  the  age 
of  the  social  question.  One  must  be  ignorant  indeed  of  the 
activity  of  the  churches  and  of  the  productivity  of  religious 
thinkers,  if  he  does  not  own  that  in  Christian  circles  also 
no  questions  are  so  rife  as  these.     Whether  the  panaceas  have 


184    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

been  all  wise  or  profitable  may  be  questioned.  Whether  the 
interest  has  not  been  even  excessive  and  one-sided,  whether 
the  accusation  has  not  been  occasionally  unjust  and  the  self- 
accusation  morbid,  these  are  questions  which  it  might  be 
possible  in  some  quarters  to  ask.  This  is,  however,  only 
another  form  of  proof  of  what  we  say.  The  religious  interest 
in  social  questions  has  not  been  aroused  primarily  by  intellec- 
I  tual  and  scientific  impulses,  nor  fostered  mainly  by  doctrinaire 
discussion.  On  the  contrary,  the  initiative  has  been  from 
the  practical  side.  It  has  been  a  question  of  life  and  service.^ 
If  anything,  one  often  misses  the  scientific  note  in  the 
flood  of  semi-religious  literature  relating  to  this  theme,  the 
realisation  that,  to  do  well,  it  is  often  profitable  to  think. 
Yet  there  is  effort  to  mediate  the  best  results  of  social- 
scientific  thinking,  through  clerical  education  and  directly 
to  the  laity.  On  the  other  hand,  a  deep  sense  of  ethical  and 
spiritual  responsibility  is  prevalent  among  thinkers  upon 
social  topics. 

Often  indeed  has  the  quality  of  Christianity  been  observed 
which  is  here  exemplified.  Each  succeeding  age  has  read 
into  Christ's  teachings,  or  drawn  out  from  his  example, 
the  special  meaning  which  that  generation,  or  that  social 
level,  or  that  individual  man  had  need  to  draw.  To  them  in 
their  enthusiasm  it  has  often  seemed  as  if  this  were  the  only 
lesson  reasonable  men  could  draw.  Nothing  could  be  more 
enlightening  than  is  reflexion  upon  this  reading  of  the  ever- 
changing  ideals  of  man's  life  into  Christianity,  or  of  Christi- 
anity into  the  ever-advancing  ideals  of  man's  life.  This 
chameleonlike  quality  of  Christianity  is  the  farthest  possible 
remove  from  the  changelessness  which  men  love  to  attribute 
to  religion.  It  is  the  most  wonderful  quality  which  Chris- 
tianity possesses.  It  is  precisely  because  of  the  recognition 
of  this  capacity  for  change  that  one  may  safely  argue  the| 
continuance  of  Christianity  in  the  world.  Yet  also  because' 
of  this  recognition,  one  is  put  upon  his  guard  against  joining 
too  easily  in  the  clamour  that  a  past  apprehension  of  religion 
was  altogether  wrong,  or  that  a  new  and  urgent  one,  in  its 
exclusive  emphasis  and  its  entirety,  is  right.     Our  age  is 


v.]  NATURAL  AND  SOCIAL  SCIENCES  185 

haunted  by  the  sense  of  terrific  social  and  economic  inequahties  / 
which  prevail.  It  has  set  its  heart  upon  the  ehmination  of  ^ 
these  inequalities.  It  is  an  age  whose  disrespect  for  religion 
I  is  in  some  part  due  to  the  fact  that  religion  has  not  done 
(away  with  these  inequalities.  It  is  an  age  which  is  imme- 
diately interested  in  an  interpretation  of  religion  which  will 
make  central  the  contention  that,  before  all  things  else,  these 
inequalities  must  be  done  away.     If  religion  can  be  made  a 

I  means  of  every  man's  getting  his  share  of   the  blessings  of 

'  this  world,  well  and  good.  If  not,  there  are  many  men  and 
women  to  whom  religion  seems  utterly  meaningless. 

This  sentence  hardly  overstates  the  case.  It  is  the  challenge 
of  the  age  to  religion  to  do  something  which  the  age  pro- 
foundly needs,  and  which  religion  under  its  age-long  dominant 
apprehension  has  not  conspicuously  done,  nor  even  on  a  great 
scale  attempted.  It  is  the  challenge  to  religion  to  undertake 
.a  work  of  surpassing  grandeur — nothing  less  than  the  actuah- 

I  sation  of  the  whole  ideal  of  the  life  of  man.  Rehgious  men 
respond  with  the  quickened  and  conscientious  conviction,  not 
indeed  that  they  have  laid  too  great  an  emphasis  upon  the 
spiritual,  but  that  under  a  dualistic  conception  of  God  and 
man  and  world,  they  have  never  sufficiently  realised  that  the 
spiritual  is  to  be  realised  in  the  material,  the  ideal  in  and  not 
apart  from  the  actual,  the  eternal  in  and  not  after  the  tem- 
poral. Yet  with  that  oscillatory  quality  which  belongs  to 
human  movements,  especially  where  old  wrongs  and  errors 
have  come  deeply  to  be  felt,  a  part  of  the  literature  of  the  con- 
tention shows  marked  tendency  to  extremes.  A  religion  in  the 
fbody  must  become  a  religion  of  the  body.  A  Christianity  of 
the  social  state  runs  risk  of  being  apprehended  as  merely 
one  more  means  for  compassing  outward  and  material  ends. 

I  Religion  does  stand  for  the  inner  life  and  the  transcendent 
world,  only  not  an  inner  life  through  the  neglect  of  the  outer, 
or  a  transcendent  world  in  some  far-off  star  or  after  an  aeon  or 
two.  There  might  be  meaning  in  the  argument  that,  exactly 
I  because  so  many  other  forces  in  our  age  do  make  for  the 
realisation  of  the  outer  life  and  present  world  with  an  effective- 
ness and  success  which  no  previous  age  has  ever  dreamed, 


186    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

there  is  the  more  reason,  and  not  the  less,  why  religion  should 
still  be  religion.  Exactly  this  is  the  contention  of  Eucken  in 
one  of  the  most  significant  contributions  of  recent  years  to 
the  philosophy  of  religion,  his  Wahrheitsgehalt  der  Religion, 
1901,  transl.  Jones,  1911.  The  very  source  and  cause  of  the. 
sure  recovery  of  religion  in  our  age  will  be  the  experience  \ 
of  the  futility,  the  bankruptcy,  of  a  civilisation  without 
faith.  No  nobler  argument  has  been  heard  in  our  time 
for  the  spiritual  meaning  of  religion,  with  the  fullest  recog- 
nition of  all  its  other  meanings. 

The  modern  emphasis  on  the  social  aspects  of  rehgion  may  be 
said  to  have  been  first  clearly  expressed  in  Seeley's  Ecce  Homo, 
1867.     The  pith  of  the  book  is  in  this  phrase  :   '  To  reorganise \ 
society  and  to  bind  the  members  of  it  together  by  the  closest ) 
ties  was  the  business  of  Jesus'  life.'     Allusion  has  been  made  J 
to  Fremantle's  The  World  as  the  Subject  of  Redemption,  1885. 
Worthy  of  note  is  also  Fairbairn's  Religion  in  History  and 
Modern  Life,    1894 ;    pre-eminently  so  is  Bosanquet's  The 
Civilisation   of  Christendom,    1893.     Westcott's    Incarnation 
and    Common    Life,    1893,    contains    utterances    of    weight. 
Peabody,  in  his  book,  Jesus  Christ  and  the  Social  Question, 
1905,  has  given,  on  the  whole,  the  best  resume  of  the  discus- 
sion.    He  conveys   incidentally  an   impression  of  the  body 
of  literature  produced  in  recent  years,  in  which  it  is  assumed, 
sometimes  with  embitterment,  that  the  centre  of  gravity  of 
Christianity  is  outside  the  Church.     Sell,  in  the  very  title 
of    his    illuminating    little    book,    Christenthum    und    Welt- 
geschichte  seit  der  Reformation  :    das  Christenthum  in  seiner 
Entwickelung  uber  die  Kirche  hinaus,   1910,  records  an  im- 
pression, which  is  widespread  and  true,  that  the  characteristic 
mark  of  modern  Christianity  is  that  it  has  transcended  the 
organs  and  agencies  officially  created  for  it.     It  has  become* 
non-ecclesiastical,  if  not  actually  hostile  to  the  Church.     It  J 
has  permeated   the  world   in  unexpected  fashion  and  does 
the  deeds  of  Christianity,  though  rather  eager  to  avoid  the 
name.     The  anti-clericalism  of  the  Latin  countries  is  not  un*^ 
intelligible,  the  anti-ecclesiasticism  of  the  Teutonic  not  without  \ 
a  cause.     German  socialism,  ever  since  Karl  Marx,  has  been  \ 


v.]  NATURAL  AND  SOCIAL  SCIENCES  187 

fundamentally  antagonistic  to  any  religion  whatsoever.  It  is 
purely  secularist  in  tone.  This  is  also  a  strained  situation, 
liable  to  become  perverse.  That  part  of  the  Christian  Church 
which  understands  itself,  rejoices  in  nothing  so  much  as  in  the. 
fact  that  the  spirit  of  Christ  is  so  widely  disseminated,  his! 
influence  felt  by  many  who  do  not  know  what  influence  it  is 
which  they  feel,  his  work  done  by  vast  numbers  who  would 
never  call  themselves  his  workers.  That  part  of  the  Church  is 
not  therewith  convinced  but  that  there  is  need  of  the  Church 
as  institution,  and  of  those  who  are  consciously  disciples  of 
Jesus  in  the  world. 

By  far  the  largest  question,  however,  which  is  raised  in  this 
connexion,  is  one  different  from  any  thus  far  intimated.  It 
is,  perhaps,  the  last  question  one  would  have  expected  the 
literature  of  the  social  movement  to  raise.  It  is,  namely,  the 
question  of  the  individual.  Ever  since  the  middle  of  thCj 
eighteenth  century  a  sort  of  universalistic  optimism,  to 
which  the  individual  is  sacrificed,  has  obtained.  Within 
the  period  of  which  this  book  treats  the  world  has  won  an 
enlargement  of  horizon  of  which  it  never  dreamed.  It  has 
gained  a  forecast  of  the  future  of  culture  and  civilisation 
which  is  beyond  imagination.  The  access  of  comfort  makes 
men  at  home  in  the  world  as  they  never  were  at  home.  There 
has  been  set  a  value  on  this  Hfe  which  Ufe  never  had  before. 
The  succession  of  discoveries  and  applications  of  discovery 
makes  it  seem  as  if  there  were  to  be  no  end  in  this  direction. 
From  Rousseau  to  Spencer  men  have  elaborated  the  view\ 
that  the  historical  process  cannot  really  issue  in  anything 
else  than  in  ever  higher  stages  of  perfection  and  of  happinessT 
They  postulate  a  continuous  enhancement  of  energy  and  a 
steady  perfecting  of  intellectual  and  moral  quality.  As  the 
goal  of  evolution  appears  an  ideal  condition  which  is  either 
indefinitely  remote,  that  is,  which  gives  room  for  the  bliss  of 
infinite  progress  in  its  direction,  or  else  a  definitely  attainable 
condition,  which  would  have  within  itself  the  conditions  of 
perpetuity. 

The  resistlessness  with  which  this  new  view  of  the  life  of 
civilisation  has  won  acknowledgment  from  men  of  all  classes 


188    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

is  amazing.  It  rests  upon  a  belief  in  the  self-sufficiency  and 
the  all-sufficiency  of  the  life  of  this  world,  of  the  bearings  of 
which  it  may  be  assumed  that  few  of  its  votaries  are  aware. 
In  reality  this  view  cannot  by  any  possibility  be  described  as 
the  result  of  knowledge.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  a  venture  of 
faith.  It  is  the  peculiar,  the  very  characteristic  and  suggestive 
form  which  the  faith  of  our  age  takes.  Men  believe  in  this 
indefinite  progress  of  the  world  and  of  mankind,  because 
without  postulating  such  progress  they  do  not  see  how  they 
can  assume  the  absolute  worth  of  an  activity  which  is  yet 
the  only  thing  which  has  any  interest  to  most  of  them.  Under 
this  view  one  can  assign  to  the  individual  life  a  definite 
significance,  only  upon  the  supposition  that  the  individual 
is  the  organ  of  realisation  of  a  part  of  this  progress  of  man- 
kind. All  happiness  and  suffering,  all  changes  in  knowledge 
and  manner  of  conduct,  are  supposed  to  have  no  worth  each 
for  itself  or  for  the  sake  of  the  individual,  but  only  for  their 
relation  to  the  movement  as  a  whole.  Surely  this  is  an 
illusion.  Exactly  that  in  which  the  characteristic  quality  of 
the  world  and  of  life  is  found,  the  individual  personalities,  the 
single  generations,  the  concrete  events — these  lose,  in  this 
view,  their  own  particular  worth.  What  can  possibly  be 
the  worth  of  a  whole  of  which  the  parts  have  no  worth  ? 
We  have  here  but  a  parallel  on  a  huge  scale  of  that  deadly 
trait  in  our  own  private  lives,  according  to  which  it  makes 
no  difference  what  we  are  doing,  so  only  that  we  are  doing, 
or  w^hither  we  are  going,  so  only  that  we  cease-not  to  go,  or 
what  our  noise  is  all  about,  so  only  that  there  be  no  end  of 
the  noise.  Certainly  no  one  can  establish  the  value  of  the 
evolutionary  process  in  and  of  itself. 

If  the  movement  as  a  whole  has  no  defmite  end  that  has 
absolute  worth,  then  it  has  no  worth  except  as  the  stages,  the> 
individual  factors  included  in  it,  attain  to  something  within 
themselves  which  is  of  increasing  worth.  If  the  movement 
achieves  this,  then  it  has  worth,  not  otherwise.  We  may 
illustrate  this  question  by  asking  ourselves  concerning  the 
existence  and  significance  of  suffering  and  of  the  evil  and 
of  the  bad  which  are  in  the  world,  in  their  relation  to  this 


v.]  NATURAL  AND  SOCIAL  SCIENCES  189 

tendency   to   indefinite   progress   which   is   supposed   to   be 
inherent  in  civiHsation.     On  this  theory  we  have  to  say  that 
the  suffering  of  the  individual  is  necessary  for  the  develop- 
ment and  perfecting  of  the  whole.     As  over  against  the  whole ' 
the  individual  has  no  right  to  make  demands  as  to  welfare 
or    happiness.     The    bad    also    becomes    only    relative.     In 
the  movement  taken  as  a  whole,  it  is  probably  unavoidable. 
In  any  case  it  is  negUgible,  since  the  movement  is  irresistible. 
All  ethical  values  are  absorbed  in  the  dynamic   ones,   all| 
personal    values    in    the    collective    ones.     Surely    the    sole^ 
intelligent  question  about  any  civilisation  is,  what  sort  of 
men  does  it  produce.     If ^  it  produces  worthless  individuals, 
it  is  so  far  forth  a  worthless  civilisation.     If  it  has  sacrificed 
many  worthy  men  in  order  to  produce  this  ignoble  result, 
then  it  is  more  obviously  ignoble  than  ever. 

Furthermore,  this  notion  of  an  inherent  necessity  and  an 
irresistible  tendency  to  progress  is  a  chimera.  The  progress 
of  mankind  is  a  task.  It  is  something  to  which  the  worthy 
human  spirit  is  called  upon  to  make  contribution.  The 
\  unworthy  never  hear  the  call.  Progress  is  not  a  natural 
necessity.  It  is  an  ethical  obhgation.  It  is  a  task  which  has 
been  fulfilled  by  previous  generations  in  varying  degrees  of 
perfectness.  It  will  be  participated  in  by  succeeding  genera- 
tions with  varying  degrees  of  wisdom  and  success.  But  as 
to  there  being  anything  autonomous  about  it,  this  is  sheer 
hallucination,  myth-making  again,  on  the  part  of  those  who 
boast  that  they  despise  the  myth,  miracle-mongering  on  the 
part  of  those  who  have  abjured  the  miracle,  nonsense  on  the 
part  of  those  who  boast  that  they  alone  are  sane.  There  is  no 
ultimate  source  of  civilisation  but  the  individual,  as  there  is 
,  also  no  issue  of  civilisation  but  in  individuals.  Men,  charac- 
'  ters,  personalities,  are  the  makers  of  it.  Men  are  the  product 
which  is  made.  The  higher  stages  and  achievements  of  the 
Hfe  of  society  have  come  to  pass  always  and  only  upon  con- 
dition that  single  personalities  have  recognised  the  problem, 
seen  their  individual  duty  and  known  how  to  inspire  others 
with  enthusiasm.  Periods  of  decline  are  always  those  in 
which  this  personal  element  cannot  make  itself  felt.     Demo- 


190    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

cracies  and  periods  of  the  intensity  of  emphasis  upon  the 
social  movement,  tend  directly  to  the  depression  and  sup- 
pression of  personality.  1  Such  reflexions  will  have  served 
their  purpose  if  they  give  us  some  clear  sense  of  what  we  have 
to  understand  as  the  effect  of  the  social  movement  on  religion. 
They  may  give  also  some  forecast  of  the  effect  of  real  religion 
on  the  social  movement.  For  religion  is  the  relation  of  God 
and  personality.  It  can  be  social  only  in  the  sense  that 
society,  in  all  its  normal  relations,  is  the  sphere  within  which 
that  relation  of  God  and  personality  is  to  be  wrought  out. 

1  Siebeck,  Religionsphilosophie,  1893,  s.  407. 


VI.1  THE  ENGLISH-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  191 


CHAPTER  YI 

THE   ENGLISH-SPEAKING  PEOPLES:    ACTION   AND 
REACTION 

In  those  aspects  of  our  subject  with  which  we  have  thus  far 
dealt,  leadership  has  been  largely  with  the  Germans.  Effort 
was  indeed  made  in  the  chapter  on  the  sciences  to  illustrate 
the  progress  of  thought  by  reference  to  British  writers.  In 
this  department  the  original  and  creative  contribution  of 
British  authors  was  great.  There  were,  however,  also  in  the 
earlier  portion  of  the  nineteenth  century  movements  of  religious 
thought  in  Great  Britain  and  America  related  to  some  of  those 
which  we  have  previously  considered.  Moreover,  one  of  the 
most  influential  movements  of  English  religious  thought,  the 
so-called  Oxford  Movement,  with  the  Anglo-Catholic  revival 
which  it  introduced,  was  of  a  reactionary  tendency.  It  has 
seemed,  therefore,  feasible  to  append  to  this  chapter  that 
which  we  must  briefly  say  concerning  the  general  movement 
of  reaction  which  marked  the  century.  This  reactionary 
movement  has  indeed  everywhere  run  parallel  to  the  one 
which  we  have  endeavoured  to  record.  It  has  often  with 
vigour  run  counter  to  our  movement.  It  has  revealed  the 
working  of  earnest  and  sometimes  anxious  minds  in  direc- 
tions opposed  to  those  which  we  have  been  studying.  No 
one  can  fail  to  be  aware  that  there  has  been  a  great  Catholic 
revival  in  the  nineteenth  century.  That  revival  has  had 
place  in  the  Roman  Catholic  countries  of  the  Continent 
as  well.  It  was  in  order  to  include  the  privilege  of  refer- 
ence to  these  aspects  of  our  subject  that  this  chapter  was 
given  a  double  title.  Yet  in  no  country  has  the  nineteenth 
century  so  favourably  altered  the  position  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  as  in  England.     In  no  country  has  a  Church 


192    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    \xm. 

which  has  been  esteemed  to  be  Protestant  been  so  much 
influenced  by  Cathohc  ideas.  This  again  is  a  reason  for 
including  our  reference  to  the  reaction  here. 

According  to  Pfleiderer,  a  new  movement  in  philosophy  may] 
be  said  to  have  begun  in  Great  Britain  in  the  year  1825,  witlii^ 
the  publication  of  Coleridge's  Aids  to  Refiection.     In  Coleridge's/' 
Confessions  of  an  Enquiring  Spirit,  published  six  years  after 
his  death  in  1834,  we  have  a  suggestion  of  the  biblical-critical 
movement  which  was  beginning  to  shape  itself  in  Germany. 
In  the  same  years  we  have  evidence  in  the  works  of  Erskine 
and  the  early  writings  of  Campbell,  that  in  Scotland  theo- 
logians were  thinking  on  Schleiermacher's  lines.     In  those  i 
same  years  books  of  more  or  less  marked  rationalistic  tendency  j 
were  put  forth  by  the  Oriel  School.     Finally,  with  Pusey's 
Assize  Sermon,  in  1833,  Newman  felt  that  the  movement 
later  to  be  called  Tractarian  had  begun.      We  shall  not  be 
wrong,  therefore,  in  saying  that   the  decade  following    1825 
saw  the  beginnings  in  Britain  of  more  formal  reflexion  upon 
all  the  aspects  of  the  theme  with  which  we  are  concerned. 
;■     What  went  before  that,  however,  in  the  way  of  liberal 
religious  thinking,  though  informal  in  its  nature,  should  not 
be  ignored.     It  was  the  work  of  the  poets  of  the  end  of  the^ 
eighteenth  and  of  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  centuries.' 
The  culmination  of  the  great  revolt  against  the  traditional 
in  state  and  society  and  against  the  conventional  in  religion, 
had  been  voiced  in  Britain  largely  by  the  poets.     So  vigorous 
was  this  utterance  and  so  effective,  that  some  have  spoken 
of  the  contribution  of  the  English  poets  to  the  theological 
reconstruction.     It  is  certain  that  the  utterances  of  the  poets 
tended  greatly  to  the  dissemination  of  the  new  ideas.     There 
was  in  Great  Britain  no  such  unity  as  we  have  observed 
among  the  Germans,  either  of  the  movement  as  a  whole  or  in 
its  various  parts.     There  was  a  consecution  nothing  less  than 
marvellous  in  the  work  of  the  philosophers  from  Kant  to 
Hegel.     There   was    a    theological    sequence    from    Schleier-^ 
macher  to  Ritschl.     There  was  an  unceasing  critical  advance  J 
from  the  days  of  Strauss.    There  was  nothing  resembling  this 
in  the  work  of  the  English-speaking  people.  The  contributions 


VI.]  THE  ENGLISH-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  193 

were  for  a  long  time  only  sporadic.  The  movement  had  no 
inclusiveness.  There  was  no  aspect  of  a  solid  front  in  the 
advance.  In  the  department  of  the  sciences  only  was  the 
situation  different.  In  a  way,  therefore,  it  will  be  necessary 
in  this  chapter  merely  to  single  out  individuals,  to  note  points 
of  conflict,  one  and  another,  all  along  the  great  line  of  advance. 
Or,  to  put  it  differently,  it  will  be  possible  to  pursue  a  chrono- 
logical arrangement  which  would  have  been  bewildering  in 
our  study  heretofore.  With  the  one  great  division  between 
the  progressive  spirits  and  the  men  of  the  reaction,  it  will 
be  possible  to  speak  of  philosophers,  critics  and  theologians 
together,  among  their  owti  contemporaries,  and  so  to  follow 
the  century  as  it  advances. 

In  the  closing  years  of  the  eighteenth  century  in  England  I 
what  claimed   to   be   a   rational   supernaturalism   prevailed. 
Men  sought  to  combine  faith  in  revealed  religion  with  the 
empirical   philosophy  of  Locke.     They  conceived  God  and 
his  relation  to  the  world  under  deistical  forms.     The  educate(J) 
often  lacked  in  singular  degree  all  deeper  religious  feeling. 
They  were   averse   to    mysticism  and  spurned   enthusiasm. 
Utilitarian  considerations,  which  formed  the  practical  side  of 
the  empirical  philosophy ,  played  a  prominent  part  also  in  ortho- 
dox belief.    The  theory  of  the  universe  which  obtained  among 
the  religious  is  seen  at  its  worst  in  some  of  the  volumes  of  the 
Warburton   Lectures,  and   at   its   best   perhaps  in  Butler's^ 
Analogy  of  Natural  and  Revealed  Religion.     The  character 
and  views  of  the  clergy  and  of  the  ruling  class  among  the  laity 
of  the  Church  of  England,  early  in  the  nineteenth  century, 
are   pictured   with    love    and  humour  in  Trollope's  novels. 
They  form  the  background  in  many  of  George  Eliot's  books, 
where,  in  more  mordant  manner,  both   their  strength  and 
weaknesses  are  shown.     Even  the  remarks  which  introduc^ 
Dean  Church's  Oxford  Movement,  1891,  in  which  the  churchly( 
element  is  dealt  -vith  in  deep  affection,  give  anything  but 
an  inspiring  view. 

The  contrast  with  this  would-be  rational  and  unemotional 
religious  respectability  of  the  upper  classes  was  furnished,  for 
masses  of  the  people,  in  the  quickening  of  the  consciousness 

N 


194     HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

of  sin  and  grace  after  the  manner  of  the  Methodists.  But  the 
Methodism  of  the  earher  age  had  as  good  as  no  intellectual 
relations  whatsoever.  The  Wesleys  and  Whitefield  had  in- 
deed influenced  a  considerable  portion  of  the  Anglican  com- 
munion. Their  pietistic  trait,  combined,  for  the  most  part, 
with  a  Calvinism  which  Wesley  abhorred  and  an  old-fashioned 
low  church  feeling  with  which  also  Wesley  had  no  sympathy, 
shows  itself  in  the  so-called  evangelical  party  which  was 
strong  before  1830.  This  evangelical  movement  in  the 
Church  of  England  manifested  deep  religious  feeling,  it  put 
forth  zealous  philanthropic  effort,  it  had  among  its  represen- 
tatives men  and  women  of  great  beauty  of  personal  character 
and  piety.  Yet  it  was  completely  cut  off  from  any  living 
relation  to  the  thought  of  the  age.  There  was  among  its 
representatives  no  spirit  of  theological  inquiry.  There  was, 
if  anything,  less  probability  of  theological  reconstruction, 
from  this  quarter,  than  from  the  circles  of  the  older  German 
pietism,  with  which  this  English  evangelicalism  of  the  time  of 
the  later  Georges  had  not  a  little  in  common.  There  had  been 
a  great  enthusiasm  for  humanity  at  the  opening  of  the  period 
of  the  French  Revolution,  but  the  excesses  and  atrocities  of 
the  Revolution  had  profoundly  shocked  the  English  mind. 
There  was  abroad  something  of  the  same  sense  for  the  return 
to  nature,  and  of  the  greatness  of  man,  which  moved  Schiller 
and  Goethe.  The  exponents  of  it  were,  however,  almost 
exclusively  the  poets,  Wordsworth,  Shelley,  Keats  and 
Byron.  There  was  nothing  which  combined  these  various 
elements  as  parts  of  a  great  whole.  Britain  had  stood  outside 
the  area  of  the  Revolution,  and  yet  had  put  forth  stupendous 
efforts,  ultimately  successful,  to  make  an  end  of  the  revo- 
lutionary era  and  of  the  Napoleonic  despotism.  This  tended 
perhaps  to  give  to  Britons  some  natural  satisfaction  in  the 
British  Constitution  and  the  established  Church  which 
flourished  under  it.  Finally,  while  men  on  the  Continent 
were  devising  holy  alliances  and  other  chimeras  of  the  sort, 
England  was  precipitated  into  the  earlier  acute  stages  of  the 
industrial  revolution  in  which  she  has  led  the  European 
nations  and  still  leads.      This  fact  explains  a  certain  pre- 


VI.]  THE  ENGLISH-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  195 

occupation  of  the  British  mind  with  questions  remote  from 
theological  reconstruction  or  rehgious  speculation. 


The  Poets 

It  may  now  sound  like  a  contradiction  if  we  assert  that, 
the  years  from  1780  to  1830  constitute  the  era  of  the  noblest  j 
English  poetry  since  the  times  of  great  Elizabeth.     The  social  ^ 
direction  of  the  new  theology  of  the  present  day,  with  its  cry 
against  every  kind  of  injustice,  with  its  claim  of  an  equal 
opportunity  for  a  happy  life  for  every  man — this  was  the  fore-  . 
cast  of  Co\\^er,  as  it  had  been  of  Blake.    To  Blake  all  outward 
infallible  authority  of  books  or  churches  was  iniquitous.     He  ^ 
was  at  daggers  dra\^Ti  with  every  doctrine  which  set  limit  to 
the  freedom  of  all  men  to  love  God,  or  which  could  doubt  that 
God  had  loved  all  men.    Jesus  alone  had  seen  the  true  thing. 
God  was  a  father,  every  man  his  child.     Long  before  1789. 
Bums  was    filled  with  the  new  ideas  of    the  freedom  ana 
brotherhood  of  man,  with  zeal  for  the  overthrow  of  unjust 
privilege.     He   had    spoken    in    imperishable   words  of    the 
holiness  of  the  common  life.     He  had  come  into  contact  with 
the    most    dreadful    consequences    of    Calvinism.     He    has 
pilloried  these  mercilessly  in  his  '  Holy  Tulzie '  and  in  his  '  Holy 
Willie's  Prayer.'     Such  poems  must  have  shaken  Calvinism 
more  than  a  thousand  liberal  sermons  could  have  done.     What 
Coleridge  might  have  done  in  this  field,  had  he  not  so  early 
turned  to  prose,  it  is  not  easy  to  say.     The  verse  of  his  early 
days  rests  upon  the  conviction,  fundamental  to  his  later  phil- 
osophy, that  all  the  new  ideas  concerning  men  and  the  world 
are  a  revelation  of  God.    Wordsworth  seems  never  consciously 
to  have  broken  with  the  current  theology.     His  view  of  the 
natural  glory  and  goodness  of  humanity,  especially  among ^ 
the  poor  and  simple,  has  not  much  relation  to  that  theology^ 
His  view  of  nature,  not  as  created  of  God.  in  the  conventional 
sense,  but  as  itself  filled  with  God,  of  God  as  conscious  of\ 
himself  at  every  point  of  nature's  being,  has  still  less.     Man 
and  nature  are  but  different  manifestations  of  the  one  soul 
of  all.     Byron's  contribution  to  Christian  thought,  we  need 


196    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTUN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

hardly  say,  was  of  a  negative  sort.     It  was  destructive  rather ) 
than  constructive.     Among  the  conventions  and  hypocrisies 
of  society  there  were  none  which  he  more  utterly  despised  than 
those  of  religion  and  the  Church  as  he  saw  these.     There  is 
something  volcanic,  Voltairean  in  his  outbreaks.     But  there'^ 
is  a  difference.     Both  Voltaire  and  Byron  knew  that  they 
had  not  the  current  religion.     Voltaire  thought,  nevertheless ,> 
that  he  had  a  religion.     Posterity  has  esteemed  that  he  had'' 
little.     Byron  thought  he  had  none.     Posterity  has  felt  tha't) 
he  had  much.     His  attack  was  made  in  a  reckless  bitterness 
which  lessened  its  effect.     Yet  the  truth  of  many   things 
which    he    said    is    now    overwhelmingly    obvious.     Shelley 
began  with  being  what  he  called  an  atheist.     He  ended  with} 
being  what  we  call  an  agnostic,   whose  pure  poetic  spirit  , 
carried  him  far  into  the  realm  of  the  highest  idealism.     The 
existence  of  a  conscious  will  within  the  universe  is  not  quite 
thinkable.     Yet  immortal  love  pervades  the  whole.     Immor- 
tality is  improbable,  but  his  highest  flights  continually  imply 
it.     He  is  sure  that  when  any  theology  violates  the  primary 
human  affections,  it  tramples  into  the  dust  all  thoughts  and 
feelings  by  which  men  may  become  good.     The  men  who, 
about    1840,    stood   paralysed   between   what   Strauss   later  j 
called  '  the  old  faith  and  the  new,'  or,  as  Arnold  phrased  it,  were/ 
'  between  two  worlds,  one  dead,  the  other  powerless  to  be  born,'' 
found  their  inmost  thoughts  written  broad  for  them  in  Arthur 
Clough.     From  the  time  of  the  opening  of  Tennyson's  work, 
the  poets,  not  by  destruction  but  by  construction,  not  in 
opposition  to  religion  but  in  harmony  with  it,  have  built 
up  new  doctrines  of  God  and  man  and  aided  incalculably  in 
preparing  the  way  for  a  new  and  nobler  theology.     In  the 
latter  part  of  the  nineteenth  century  there  was  perhaps  no 
one  man  in  England  who  did  more  to  read  all  of  the  vast 
advance  of  knowledge  in  the  light  of  higher  faith,  and  to  fill 
such  a  faith  with  the  spirit  of  the  glad  advance  of  knowledge, 
than  did  Browning.     Even  Arnold  has  voiced  in  his  poetry^ 
not  a  little  of  the  noblest  conviction  of  the  age.     And  what 
shall  one  say  of  Mrs.  Browning,  of  the  Rossettis  and  William 
Morris,  of  Emerson  and  Lowell,  of  Lanier  and  Whitman, 


VI.]  THE  ENGLISH-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  197 

who  have  spoken,  often  with  consummate  power  and  beauty, 
that  which  one  never  says  at  all  without  faith  and  rarely 
says  well  without  art  ? 

Coleridge 

Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge  was  born  in  1772  at  his  father's 
vicarage,  Ottery  St.  Mary's,  Devonshire.  He  was  the  tenth 
child  of  his  parents,  weak  in  frame,  always  suffering  much. 
He  was  a  student  at  Christ's  Hospital,  London,  where  he  was 
properly  bullied,  then  at  Jesus  College,  Cambridge,  where 
he  did  not  take  his  degree.  For  some  happy  years  he  lived 
in  the  Lake  region  and  was  the  friend  of  Wordsworth  and 
Southey.  He  studied  in  Gottingen,  a  thing  almost  unheard 
of  in  his  time.  The  years  1798  to  1813  were  indeed  spent  in 
utter  misery,  through  the  opium  habit  which  he  had  con- 
tracted while  seeking  relief  from  rheumatic  pain.  He  wrote 
and  taught  and  talked  in  Highgate  from  1814  to  1834.  He 
had  planned  great  works  which  never  took  shape.  For  a 
brief  period  he  severed  his  connexion  with  the  English  Church, 
coming  under  Unitarian  influence.  He  then  reverted  to  the 
relation  in  which  his  ecclesiastical  instincts  were  satisfied. 
We  read  his  Aids  to  Reflection  and  his  Confessions  of  an  En- 
quiring Spirit,  and  wonder  how  they  can  ever  have  exerted 
a  great  influence.  Nevertheless,  they  were  fresh  and  stimu- 
lating in  their  time.  That  Coleridge  was  a  power,  we  have 
testimony  from  men  differing  among  themselves  so  widely 
as  do  Hare,  Sterling,  Newman  and  John  Stuart  Mill. 
He  was  a  master  of  style.  He  had  insight  and  breadth. 
Tulloch  says  of  the  Aids,  that  it  is  a  book  which  none 
but  a  thinker  upon  divine  things  will  ever  like.  Not  all  even 
of  these  have  liked  it.  Inexcusably  fragmentary  it  some- 
times seems.  One  is  fain  to  ask  :  What  right  has  any  man 
to  publish  a  scrap-book  of  his  musings  ?  Coleridge  had  the 
ambition  to  lay  anew  the  foundations  of  spiritual  philosophy. 
The  Aids  were  but  of  the  nature  of  prolegomena.  For 
substance  his  philosophy  went  back  to  Locke  and  Hume  and 
to  the  Cambridge  Platonists.  He  had  learned  of  Kant  and 
Schleiermacher  as  well.      He  was  no  metaphysician,  but  a 


198     HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT  [ch. 

keen  interpreter  of  spiritual  facts,  who  himself  had  been 
quickened  by  a  particularly  painful  experience.  He  saw  in 
Christianity,  rightly  conceived,  at  once  the  true  explanation 
of  our  spiritual  being  and  the  remedy  for  its  disorder.  The 
evangelical  tradition  brought  religion  to  a  man  from  without. 
It  took  no  account  of  man's  spiritual  constitution,  beyond 
the  fact  that  he  was  a  sinner  and  in  danger  of  hell.  Coleridge 
set  out,  not  from  sin  alone,  but  from  the  whole  deep  basis  of 
spiritual  capacity  and  responsibility  upon  which  sin  rests. 
He  asserts  experience.  We  are  as  sure  of  the  capacity  for  the 
good  and  of  the  experience  of  the  good  as  we  can  be  of  the 
evil.  The  case  is  similar  as  to  the  truth.  There  are  aspects 
of  truth  which  transcend  our  powers.  We  use  words  without 
meaning  when  we  talk  of  the  plans  of  a  being  who  is  neither 
an  object  for  our  senses  nor  a  part  of  our  self-consciousness. 
All  truth  must  be  capable  of  being  rendered  into  words  con- 
formable to  reason.  Theologians  had  declared  their  doctrines 
true  or  false  without  reference  to  the  subjective  standard  of 
judgment.  Coleridge  contended  that  faith  must  rest  not 
merely  upon  objective  data,  but  upon  inward  experience. 
The  authority  of  Scripture  is  in  its  truthfulness,  its  answer  to 
the  highest  aspirations  of  the  human  reason  and  the  most 
urgent  necessities  of  the  moral  hfe.  The  doctrine  of  an 
atonement  is  intelligible  only  in  so  far  as  it  too  comes  within 
the  range  of  spiritual  experience.  The  apostolic  language 
took  colour  from  the  traditions  concerning  sacrifice.  Much 
has  been  taken  by  the  Church  as  literal  dogmatic  statement 
which  should  be  taken  as  mere  figure  of  speech,  borrowed 
from  Jewish  sources. 

Coleridge  feared  that  his  thoughts  concerning  Scripture 
might,  if  published,  do  more  harm  than  good.  They  were 
printed  first  in  1840.  Their  writing  goes  back  into  the 
period  long  before  the  conflict  raised  by  Strauss.  There  is 
not  much  here  that  one  might  not  have  learned  from  Herder 
and  Lessing.  Utterances  of  Whately  and  Arnold  showed 
that  minds  in  England  were  waking.  But  Coleridge's  utter- 
ances rest  consistently  upon  the  philosophy  of  religion  and 
theory  of  dogma  which  have  been  above  imphed.     They  are 


VI.1  THE  ENGLISH-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  199 

more  significant  than  are  mere  flashes  of  generous  insight, 
Uke  those  of  the  men  named.  The  notion  of  verbal  in- 
spiration or  infalhble  dictation  of  the  Holy  Scriptures  could 
not  possibly  survive  after  the  modern  spirit  of  historical 
inquiry  had  made  itself  felt.  The  rabbinical  idea  was  bound 
to  disappear.  A  truer  sense  of  the  conditions  attending  the 
origins  and  progress  of  civilisation  and  of  the  immaturities 
through  which  religious  as  well  as  moral  and  social  ideas 
advance,  brought  of  necessity  a  changed  idea  of  the  nature 
of  Scripture  and  revelation.  Itsjiterature  must  be  read  as 
literature,  its  history  as  history.  For  the  answer  in  our 
hearts  to  the  spirit  in  the  Book,  Coleridge  used  the  phrase  : 
'  It  finds  me.'  *  Whatever  finds  me  bears  witness  to  itself  that 
it  has  proceeded  from  the  Holy  Ghost.  In  the  Bible  there  is 
more  that  finds  me  than  in  all  the  other  books  which  I  have 
read.'  Still,  there  is  much  in  the  Bible  that  does  not  find  me. 
It  is  full  of  contradictions,  both  moral  and  historical.  Are 
we  to  regard  these  as  all  equally  inspired  ?  The  Scripture 
itself  does  not  claim  that.  Besides,  what  good  would  it  do 
us  to  claim  that  the  original  documents  were  inerrant,  unless 
we  could  claim  also  that  they  had  been  inerrantly  trans- 
mitted ?  Apparently  Coleridge  thought  that  no  one  would 
ever  claim  that.  Coleridge  wrote  also  concerning  the  Church. 
His  volume  on  The  Constitution  of  Church  and  State  appeared 
in  1830.  It  is  the  least  satisfactory  of  his  works.  The 
vacillation  of  Coleridge's  own  course  showed  that  upon  this 
point  his  mind  was  never  clear.  Arnold  also,  though  in  a 
somewhat  different  way,  was  zealous  for  the  theory  that 
Church  and  State  are  really  identical,  the  Church  being 
merely  the  State  in  its  educational  and  religious  aspect  and 
organisation.  If  Thomas  Arnold's  moral  earnestness  and  his 
generous  spirit  could  not  save  this  theory  from  being 
chimerical,  no  better  result  was  to  be  expected  from  Coleridge. 


The  Oriel  School 

It  has  often  happened  in  the  history  of  the  English  univer- 
sities that  a  given  college  has  become,  through  its  body  of 


200    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

tutors  and  students,  through  its  common-room  talk  and 
hterary  work,  the  centre,  for  the  time,  of  a  movement  of 
thought  which  gives  leadership  to  the  college.  In  this 
manner  it  has  been  customary  to  speak  of  the  group  of  men 
who,  before  the  rise  of  the  Oxford  Movement,  gathered  at 
Oriel  College,  as  the  Oriel  School.  Newman  and  Keble  were 
both  Oriel  tutors.  The  Oriel  men  were  of  distinctly  liberal 
tendency.  There  were  men  of  note  among  them.  There 
was  Whately,  Archbishop  of  Dublin  after  1831,  and  Copleston,  \ 
from  whom  both  Keble  and  Newman  owned  that  they  learned  ' 
much.  There  was  Arnold,  subsequently  Headmaster  of  Rugby. 
There  was  Hampden,  Professor  of  Divinity  after  1836.  The 
school  was  called  from  its  liberalism  the  Noetic  school. 
Whether  this  epithet  contained  more  of  satire  or  of  complac- 
ency it  is  difficult  to  say.  These  men  arrested  attention  and 
filled  some  of  the  older  academic  and  ecclesiastical  heads  with 
alarm.  Without  disrespect  one  may  say  that  it  is  difficult 
now  to  understand  the  commotion  which  they  made.  Arnold 
had  a  truly  beautiful  character.  What  he  might  have  done 
as  Professor  of  Ecclesiastical  History  in  Oxford  was  nevei 
revealed,  for  he  died  in  1842.  Whately,  viewed  as  a  noetic, 
appears  commonplace. 

Perhaps  the  only  one  ot  the  group  upon  whom  we  need\ 
dwell  was  Hampden.     In   his  Hampton   Lectures  of  1832,  \ 
under  the  title  of  The  Scholastic  Philosophy  considered  in  J 
its  Relation  to  Christian  Theology,  he  assailed  what  had  long 
been  the  very  bulwark  of  traditionalism.     His  idea  was  to 
show  how  the  vast  fabric  of  scholastic  theology  had  grown 
up,  particularly  what  contributions  had  been  made  to  it  in 
the  Middle  Age.     The  traditional  dogma  is  a  structure  reared] 
upon  the  logical  terminology  of  the  patristic  and  medisevai  \ 
schools.     It  has  little  foundation  in  Scripture  and  no  responsej 
in  the  religious  consciousness.     We  have  here  the  application, 
within  set  limits,  of  the  thesis  which  Harnack  in  our  own  time 
has  applied  in  a  universal  way.     Hampden's  opponents  were  ) 
not  wrong  in  saying  that  his  method  would  dissolve,  not  merely 
that  particular  system  of  theology,  but  all  creeds  and  theo- 
logies   whatsoever.     Patristic,    mediaeval    Catholic    theology  \ 


VI.]  THE  E^^GLISH-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  201 

and  scholastic  Protestantism,  no  less,  would  go  down  before 
it.     A  pamphlet  attributed  to  Newman,  published  in  1836, 1 
precipitated  a  discussion  which,  for  bitterness,  has  rarely  been/ 
surpassed  in  the  melancholy  history  of  theological  dispute. 
The  excitement  went  to  almost  unheard  of  lengths.     In  the 
controversy  the  Archbishop,  Dr.  Howley,  made   but  a  poor 
figure.     The  Duke  of   Wellington  did   not  add   to   his  fame. 
Wilberforce  and   Newman  never  cleared  themselves  of  the\ 
suspicion    of    indirectness.     This    was,    however,    after    the 
opening  of  the  Oxford  Movement. 

Erskine  and  Campbell 

The  period  from  1820  to  1850  was  one  of  religious  and 
intellectual   activity  in   Scotland  as   well.     Tulloch  depicts 
with  a  Scotsman's  patriotism  the  movement  which  centres! 
about  the  names  of  Erskine  and  Campbell.     Pfleiderer  also  1 
judges  that  their  contribution  was  as  significant  as  any  made 
to   dogmatic    theology   in   Great   Britain   in   the   nineteenth 
century.     They    achieved    the   same    reconstruction   of   the  \ 
doctrine  of  salvation  which  had  been  effected  by  Kant  andj 
Schleiermacher.     At  their  hands  the  doctrine   was  rescued 
from  that  forensic  externality  into  which  Calvinism  had  de^ 
generated.    It  was  given  again  its  quality  of  ethical  inw^ardnesaj 
and  based  directly  upon  religious  experience.     High  Lutheran- 
ism  had  issued  in  the  same  externality  in  Germany  beforeM 
Kant  and  Schleiermacher,  and  the  New  England  theology 
before  Channing  and  Bushnell.     The  merits  of  Christ  achieved 
an  external  salvation,  of  which  a  man  became  participant 
practically  upon  condition  of  assent  to  certain  propositions. 
Similarly,  in  the  Catholic  revival,  salvation  was  conceived^ 
as  an  external  and  future  good,  of   which  a  man  became/ 
participant  through  the  sacraments  applied  to  him  by  priests 
in  apostolical  succession.     In  point  of  externality  there  was 
not  much  to  choose  between  views  which  were  felt  to  be 
radically  opposed  the  one  to  the  other. 

Erskine  was  not  a  man  theologically  educated.     He  led  a 
peculiarly  secluded  life.     He  was  an  advocate  by  profession, 


202     HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT   [ch. 

but,  withdrawing  from  that  career,  virtually  gave  himself  up 
to  meditation.     Campbell  was  a  minister  of  the  EstabhsheJA 
Church  of  Scotland  in  a  remote  village,  Row,  upon  the  Gare  / 
Loch.     When  he  was  convicted  of  heresy  and  driven  from 
the  ministry,  he  also  devoted  himself  to  study  and  authorship.| 
Both  men  seem  to  have  come  to  their  results  largely  froml 
the  application  of  their  own  sound  religious  sense  to  thej 
Scriptures.     That  the  Scottish  Church  should  have  rejected  ) 
the  truth  for  which  these  men  contended  was  the  heaviest^ 
blow  which  it  could  have  inflicted  on  itself.     Thereby  it 
arrested  its  own  healthy  development.     It  perpetuated  its^j 
traditional  view,  somewhat  as  New  England  orthodoxy  was' 
given  a  new  lease  of  life  through  the  partisanship  which  the 
Unitarian  schism  engendered.     The  matter  was  not  mended 
at  the  time  of  the  great  rupture  of  the  Scottish  Church  in  1843. 
That  body  which  broke  away  from  the  Establishment,  and 
achieved  a  purely  ecclesiastical  control  of  its  own  clergy,  won, 
indeed,  by  this  means  the  name  of  the  Free  Church,  though, 
in  point  of  theological  opinion,  it  was  far  from  represent- 
ing the  more  free  and  progressive  element.     Tulloch  pays  a 
beautiful  tribute  to  the  character  of  Erskine,  whom  he  knew. 
Quiet,  brooding,  introspective,  he  read  his  Bible  and  his  own'A 
soul,  and  with  singular  purity  of  intuition  generalised  from  J 
his  own  experience.     Therewith  is  described,  however,  both 
the  power  and  the  limitation  of  his  work.     His  first  book  was 
entitled  Remarks  on  the  Internal  Evidence  for  the  Truth  of 
Bevealed  Religion,  1820.     The  title  itself  is  suggestive  of  the 
revolution  through  which  the  mind  both  of  Erskine  and  of 
his  age  was  passing.     His  book,  The  Unconditional  Freeness  of 
the  Gospel,  appeared  in  1828  ;    The  Brazen  Serpent  in  1831. 
Men  have  confounded  forgiveness  and  pardon.     They  have 
made    pardon    equivalent    to    salvation.     But    salvation    is 
character.     Forgiveness  is  only  one  of  the  means  of  it.     SaM 
vation  is  not  a  future  good.     It  is  a  present  fellowship  with) 
God.     It  is  sanctification  of  character  by  means  of  our  labour  i 
and  God's  love.     The  fall  was  the  rise  of  the  spirit  of  freedom.) 
Fallen  man  can  never  be  saved  except  through  glad  surrender"^ 
of  his  childish  independence  to  the  truth  and  goodness  of   1 


VI.]  THE  ENGLISH-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  203 

God.  Yet  that  surrender  is  the  preservation  and  enlargement 
of  our  independence.  It  is  the  secret  of  true  self-reahsation. 
The  sufferings  of  Christ  reveal  God's  holy  love.  It  is  not  as) 
if  God's  love  had  been  purchased  by  the  sufferings  of  his  Son. 
On  the  contrary,  it  is  man  who  needs  to  beheve  in  God's  | 
love,  and  so  be  reconciled  to  the  God  whom  he  has  feared 
and  hated.  Christ  overcomes  sin  by  obediently  enduring 
the  suffering  which  sin  naturally  entails.  He  endures  it  in 
pure  love  of  his  brethren.  Man  must  overcome  sin  in  the 
same  way. 

Campbell  published,  so  late  as  1856,  his  great  work  The  \ 
Nature  of  the  Atonement  and  its  Relation  to  the  Remission  of  j 
Sins  and  Eternal  Life.    It  was  the  matured  result  of  the  reflec- 
tions of  a  quarter  of  a  century,  spent  partly  in  enforced  retire- 
ment after  1831.     Campbell  maintains  unequivocally  that  thei 
sacrifice  of  Christ  cannot  be  understood  as  a  punishment  due  \ 
to  man's  sin,  meted  out  to  Christ  in  man's  stead.     Viewed 
retrospectively,  Christ's  work  in  the  atonement  is  but  the] 
highest  example  of  a  law  otherwise  universally  operative./ 
No  man  can  work  redemption  for  his  fellows  except  by  enter-\ 
ing  into  their  condition,  as  if  everything  in  that  condition  \ 
were  his  owti,  though  much  of  it  may  be  in  no  sense  his 
due.     It  is  freely  borne  by  him  because  of  his  identification 
of  himself  with  them.     Campbell  lingers  in  the  myth  of  Christ's  V 
being  the  federal  head  of  the  humanity.     There  is  something 
pathetic  in  the  struggle  of  his  mind  to  save  phrases  and  the 
paraphernaUa  of  an  ancient  view  which,  however,  his  funda- 
mental principle  rendered  obsolete.     He  struggles  to  save  the 
word  satisfaction,   though  it  means  nothing   in  his  system 
save  that  God  is  satisfied  as  he  contemplates  the  character 
of  Christ.     Prospectively  considered,  the  sacrifice  of  Christ 
effects  salvation  by  its  moral  power  over  men  in  example 
and  inspiration.     Vicarious  sacrifice,  the  result  of  which  was  ^ 
merely  imputed,  would  leave  the  sinner  just  where  he  was 
before.    It  is  an  empty  fiction.    But  the  spectacle  of  suffering 
freely  undertaken  for  our  sakes  discovers  the  treasures  of 
the  divine  image  in  man.      The  love  of  God  and  a  man's 
own  resolve  make  him  in  the  end,  in  fact,  that  which  he 


204    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [en. 

has  always  been  in  capacity  and  destiny,  a  child  of  God, 
possessed  of  the  secret  of  a  growing  righteousness,  which  is 
itself  salvation. 


Maubicb 

Scottish  books  seem  to  have  been  but  little  read  in  England 
in  that  day.     It  was  Maurice  who  first  made  the  substance  of 
Campbell's  teaching  known  in  England.     Frederick  Denison\ 
Maurice  was  the  son  of  a  Unitarian  minister,  educated  at   ) 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  at  a  time  when  it  was  impossible  j 
for  a  Nonconformist  to  obtain  a  degree.     He  was  ordained 
a  priest  of  the  Church  of  England  in  1834,  even  suffering 
himself  to  be  baptised  again.    He  was  chaplain  of  Lincoln's  Inn 
and  Professor  of  Theology  in  King's  College,  London.    After 
1866  he  was  Professor  of  Moral  Philosophy  in  CambridgeX 
though  his  life-work  was  over.     At  the  heart  of  Maurice's 
theology  lies  the  contention  to  which  he  gave  the  name  of'^' 
universal    redemption.     Christ's    work    is    for    every    man. 
Every  man  is  indeed  in  Christ.     Man's  unhappiness  lies  only/ 
in  the  fact  that  he  will  not  own  this  fact  and  live  accordingly.) 
Man  as  man  is  the  child  of  God.     He  cannot  undo  that  fact 
or  alter  that  relation  if  he  would.     He  does  not  need  to  become 
a  child  of  God,  as  the  phrase  has  been.     He  needs  only  to 
recognise  that  he  already  is  such  a  child.     He  can  never  cease 
to  bear  this  relationship.     He  can  only  refuse  to  fulfil  it. 
With  other  words  Erskine  and  Coleridge  and  Schleiermacher 
had  said  this  same  thing. 

For  the  rest,  one  may  speak  briefly  of  Maurice.  He  was 
animated  by  the  strongest  desire  for  Church  unity,  but  at 
the  back  of  his  mind  lay  a  conception  of  the  Church  and  an 
insistence  upon  uniformity  which  made  unity  impossible. 
In  the  light  of  his  own  inheritance  his  ecclesiastical  positivism 
seems  strange.  Perhaps  it  was  the  course  of  his  experience 
which  made  this  irrational  positivism  natural.  Few  men  in 
his  generation  suffered  greater  persecutions  under  the  un^ 
warranted  supposition  on  the  part  of  contemporaries  that/ 
he  had  a  liberal  mind.     In  reality,  few  men  in  his  generation 


VI.]  THE  ENGLISH-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  205 

had  less  of  a  quality  which,  had  he  possessed  it,  would  have 
given  him  peace  and  joy  even  in  the  midst  of  his  persecutions. 
The  casual  remark  above  made  concerning  Campbell  is  true 
in  enhanced  degree  of  Maurice.  A  large  part  of  the  industry 
of  a  very  industrious  life  was  devoted  to  the  effort  to  convince 
others  and  himself  that  those  few  really  wonderful  glimpses 
of  spiritual  truth  which  he  had,  had  no  disastrous  conse- 
quences for  an  inherited  system  of  thought  in  which  they 
certainly  did  not  take  their  rise.  His  name  was  connected 
with  the  social  enthusiasm  that  inaugurated  a  new  movement  i 
in  England  which  will  claim  attention  in  another  paragraph.  ' 

Channeng 

Allusion  has  been  made  to  a  revision  of  traditional  theology 
which  took  place  in  America  also,  upon  the  same  general 
lines  which  we  have  seen  in  Schleiermacher  and  in  Campbell. 
TTie  typical  figure  here,  the  protagonist  of  the  movement,  is 
William  Ellery  Channing.  It  may  be  doubted  whether  there 
has  ever  been  a  civilisation  more  completely  controlled  by  its 
Church  and  ministers,  or  a  culture  more  entirely  dominated 
by  theology,  than  were  those  of  New  England  until  the\ 
middle  of  the  eighteenth  century.  There  had  been  indeed/ 
a  marked  decline  in  religious  life.  The  history  of  the  Great 
Awakening  shows  that.  Remonstrances  against  the  Great 
Awakening  show  also  how  men's  minds  were  moving  away 
from  the  theory  of  the  universe  which  the  theology  of  that  1 
movement  implied.  One  cannot  say  that  in  the  preaching  of 
Hopkins  there  is  an  appreciable  relaxation  of  the  Edwardsian 
scheme.  Interestingly  enough,  it  was  in  Newport  that 
Channing  was  born  and  with  Hopkins  that  he  associated 
until  the  time  of  his  hcensure  to  preach  in  1802.  Many 
thought  that  Channing  would  stand  with  the  most  stringent 
of  the  orthodox.  Deism  and  rationalism  had  made  them- 
selves felt  in  America  after  the  Revolution.  Channing, 
during  his  years  in  Harvard  College,  can  hardly  have  failed 
to  come  into  contact  with  the  criticism  of  religion  from  this  i 
side.     There  is  no  such  clear  influence  of  current  rationalism 


206    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

upon  Channing  as,  for  example,  upon  Schleiermacher.  Yet 
here  in  the  West,  which  most  Europeans  thought  of  as  a 
wilderness,  circumstances  brought  about  the  launching  of 
this  man  upon  the  career  of  a  Hberal  religious  thinker,  when 
as  yet  Schleiermacher  had  hardly  advanced  beyond  the 
position  of  the  Discourses,  when  Erskine  had  not  yet  written  a 
line  and  Campbell  was  still  a  child.  Channing  became  minister 
of  the  Federal  Street  Church  in  Boston  in  1803.  The  appoint- 
ment of  Ware  as  Hollis  Professor  of  Divinity  in  Harvard 
College  took  place  in  1805.  That  appointment  was  the  first 
clear  indication  of  the  liberal  party's  strength.  Channing's 
Baltimore  Address  was  dehvered  in  1819.     He  died  in  1847. 

In  the  schism  among  the  Congregational  Churches  in  New  \ 
England,  which  before  1819  apparently  had  come  to  be  re-  ' 
garded  by  both  parties  as  remediless,  Channing  took  the  side  i 
of  the  opposition  to  Calvinistic  orthodoxy.     He  developed  \ 
qualities  as  controversialist  and  leader  which  the  gentler  aspect 
of  his   early  years  had  hardly   led  men   to   suspect.     This 
American  liberal  movement  had  been  referred  to  by  Belsham 
as    related    to    English    Unitarianism.     After    1815,  in   this 
country,  by  its  opponents  at  least,  the  movement  was  con- 
sistently called  Unitarian.     Channing  did  with  zeal  contend 
against  the  traditional  doctrines   of    the  atonement  and  of 
the  trinity.     On  the  other  hand,  he  saw  in  Christ  the  perfect^ 
revelation  of  God  to  humanity  and  at  the  same  time  the  ideal  / 
of  humanity.     He  believed  in  Jesus'  sinlessness  and  in  his] 
miracles,   especially   in    his    resurrection.      The   keynote    of 
Channing's  character  and  convictions  is  found  in  his  sense  of 
the  inherent  greatness  of  man.     Of  this  feeling  his  entire  I 
system  is  but  the  unfolding.     It  was  early  and  deliberately 
adopted  by  him  as  a  fundamental  faith.     It  remained  the 
immovable  centre  of  his  reverence  and  trust  amid  all   the 
inroads  of  doubt  and  sorrow.     Political  interest  was  as  natural 
to  Channing's  earlier  manhood  as  it  had  been  to  Fichte  in 
the  emergency  of  the  Fatherland.     Similarly,  in  the  later 
years  of  his  life,  when  evils  connected  with  slavery  had  made 
themselves  felt,  his  participation  in  the  abolitionist  agitation \ 
showed  the  same  enthusiasm  and  practical  bent.     He  had) 


VL]  THE  ENGLISH-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  207 

his  dream  of  communism,  his  perception  of  the  evils  of  our 
industrial  system,  his  contempt  for  charity  in  place  of  economic 
remedy.     AH  was  for  man,  all  rested  upon  supreme  faith  in 
man.      That  man  is  endowed  with  knowledge  of  the  right 
and  with  the  power  to  realise  it,  was  a  fundamental  maxim. 
Hence  arose  Channing's  assertion  of  free-will.     The  denial  of  / 
free-will  renders  the  sentiment  of  duty  but  illusory.     In  the  i 
conscience  there  is  both  a  revelation  and  a  type  of  God.     Its  ( 
suggestions,  by  the   very  authority  they  carry  ^vith   them, 
declare  themselves  to  be  God's  law.     God,  concurring  with 
our  highest  nature,  present  in  its  action,  can  be  thought  of 
only  after  the  pattern  which  he  gives  us  in  ourselves.     What- 
ever revelation  God  makes  of  himself,  he  must  deal  with  us  / 
as  with  free  beings  hving  under  natural  laws.     Revelation  ' 
must  be  merely  supplementary  to  those  laws.     Everything) 
arbitrary  and  magical,  everything  which  despairs  of  us  or 
insults  us  as  moral  agents,  everything  which  does  not  address 
itself  to  us  through  reason  and  conscience,  must  be  excluded 
from    the    intercourse    between   God  and  man.     What   the 
doctrines    of    salvation   and  atonement,   of    the    person    of 
Christ  and  of  the  influence  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  as  construed 
from  this  centre  would  be,  may  without  difficulty  be  sur- 
mised.    The  whole  of  Channing's  teaching  is  bathed  in  an 
atmosphere  of  the  reverent  love  of  God  which  is  the  very  / 
source  of  his  enthusiasm  for  man. 


BUSHNELL 

A  very  different  man  was  Horace  Bushnell,  born  in  the  year 
of  Channing's  licensure,  1802.     He  was  not  bred  under  the 
influence  of  the  strict  Calvinism  of  his  day.     His  father  wasi 
an  Arminian.     Edwards  had   made  Arminians  detested  in 
New  England.     His  mother  had  been  reared  in  the  Episcopal' 
Church.     She  was  of  Huguenot  origin.     When  about  seven- 
teen, while  tending  a  carding-machine,  he  wrote  a  paper  in 
which  he  endeavoured  to  bring  Calvinism  into  logical  coher-\ 
ence  and,  in  the  interest  of  sound  reason,  to  correct  St.  Paul's  / 
willingness  to  be  accursed  for  the  sake  of  his  brethren.     He 


208    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

graduated  from  Yale  College  in  1827.  He  taught  there  while 
studying  law  after  1829.  He  describes  himself  at  this  period  I 
as  sound  in  ethics  and  sceptical  in  religion,  the  soundness  of 
his  morals  being  due  to  nature  and  training,  the  scepticisms^ 
to  the  theology  in  which  he  was  involved.  His  law  studies 
were  complete,  yet  he  turned  to  the  ministry.  He  had  been 
born  on  the  orthodox  side  of  the  great  contention  in  which 
Channing  was  a  leader  of  the  liberals  in  the  days  of  which 
we  speak.  He  never  saw  any  reason  to  change  this  relation. 
His  clerical  colleagues,  for  half  a  hfe-time,  sought  to  change  it 
for  him.  In  1833  he  was  ordained  and  installed  as  minister 
of  the  North  Church  in  Hartford,  a  pastorate  which  he  never 
left.  The  process  of  disintegration  of  the  orthodox  body 
was  continuing.  There  was  almost  as  much  rancour  between 
the  old  and  the  new  orthodoxy  as  between  orthodox  and 
Unitarians  themselves.  Almost  before  his  career  was  well 
begun  an  incurable  disease  fastened  itself  upon  him.  Not 
much  later,  all  the  severity  of  theological  strife  befell  him. 
Between  these  two  we  have  to  think  of  him  doing  his  work 
and  keeping  his  sense  of  humour. 

His  earliest  book  of  consequence  was  on  Christian  Nurture, 
pubhshed  in  1846.  Consistent  Calvinism  presupposes  in  its 
converts  mature  years.  Even  an  adult  must  pass  through 
waters  deep  for  him.  He  is  not  a  sinful  child  of  the  Father. I 
He  is  a  being  totally  depraved  and  damned  to  everlasting 
punishment.  God  becomes  his  Father  only  after  he  is  re- 
deemed. The  revivalists'  theory  Bushnell  bitterly  opposed. 
It  made  of  religion  a  transcendental  matter  which  belonged 
on  the  outside  of  life,  a  kind  of  miraculous  epidemic.  He 
repudiated  the  prevailing  individualism.  He  anticipated 
much  that  is  now  being  said  concerning  heredity,  environ- 
ment and  subconsciousness.  He  revived  the  sense  of  the 
Church  in  which  Puritanism  had  been  so  sadly  lacking.  The 
book  is  a  classic,  one  of  the  rich  treasures  which  the  nineteenth 
century  offers  to  the  twentieth. 

Bushnell,  so  far  as  one  can  judge,  had  no  knowledge  of  Kant. 
He  is,  nevertheless,  dealing  with  Kant's  own  problem,  of  the 
theory  of  knowledge,  in  his  rather  diffuse  '  Dissertation  on 


VI.]  THE  ENGLISH-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  209 

Language,'  which  is  prefixed  to  the  volume  which  bears  the 
title  God  in  Christ,  1849.  He  was  following  his  living  principle, 
the  reference  of  doctrine  to  conscience.  God  must  be  a 
*  right  God.'  Docrma  must  make  no  assertion  concemint^ 
God  which  will  not  stand  this  test.  Not  alone  does  the 
dogma  make  such  assertions.  The  Scripture  makes  them 
as  well.  How  can  tliis  be  ?  What  is  the  relation  of  language 
to  thought  and  of  thought  to  fact  ?  How  can  the  language 
of  Scripture  be  explained,  and  yet  the  reality  of  the  revelation 
not  be  explained  away  ?  There  is  a  touching  interest  which 
attaches  to  this  Hartford  minister,  working  out,  alone  and 
clumsily,  a  problem  the  solution  of  which  the  greatest  minds 
of  the  age  had  been  gradually  bringing  to  perfection  for  three- 
quarters  of  a  century. 

In  the  year  1848  Bushnell  was  invited  to  give  addresses 
at  the  Commencements  of  three  divinity  schools  :  that  at 
Harvard,  then  unqualifiedly  Unitarian  ;  that  at  Andover, 
where  the  battle  with  Unitarianism  had  been  fought ;  and 
that  at  Yale,  where  Bushnell  had  been  trained.  The  address 
at  Cambridge  was  on  the  subject  of  the  Atonement ;  the  one 
at  New  Haven  on  the  Divinity  of  Christ,  including  Bushnell's 
doctrine  of  the  trinity ;  the  one  at  Andover  on  Dogma  and 
Spirit,  a  plea  for  the  cessation  of  strife.  He  says  squarely 
of  the  old  school  theories  of  the  atonement,  which  represent 
Christ  as  suffering  the  penalty  of  the  law  in  our  stead  :  '  They 
are  capable,  one  and  all  of  them,  of  no  light  in  which  they 
do  not  offend  some  right  sentiment  of  our  moral  being.  If 
the  great  Redeemer,  in  the  excess  of  his  goodness,  consents 
to  receive  the  penal  woes  of  the  world  in  his  person,  and  if 
that  offer  is  accepted,  what  does  it  signify,  save  that  God  will 
have  his  modicum  of  suffering  somehow  ;  and  if  he  lets  the 
guilty  go  he  will  yet  satisfy  himself  out  of  the  innocent  ?  ' 
The  vicariousness  of  love,  the  identification  of  the  sufferer 
with  the  sinner,  in  the  sense  that  the  Saviour  is  involved  by 
his  desire  to  help  us  in  the  woes  which  naturally  follow  sin, 
this  Bushnell  mightily  affirmed.  Yet  there  is  no  pretence 
that  he  used  vicariousness  or  satisfaction  in  the  same  sense 
in  which  his  adversaries  did.     He  is  magnificently  free  from 

o 


210    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

all  such  indirection.  In  the  New  Haven  address  there  is  this 
same  combination  of  fire  and  light.  The  chief  theological 
value  of  the  doctrine  of  the  trinity,  as  maintained  by  the 
New  England  Calvinistic  teachers,  had  been  to  furnish  the 
dramatis  persona',  for  the  doctrine  of  the  atonement.  In 
the  speculation  as  to  the  negotiation  of  this  substitutionary 
transaction,  the  language  of  the  theologians  had  degenerated 
into  stark  tritheism.  Edwards,  describing  the  councils  of 
the  trinity,  spoke  of  the  three  persons  as  '  they.'  Bushnell 
saw  that  any  proper  view  of  the  unity  of  God  made  the  forensic 
idea  of  the  atonement  incredible.  He  sought  to  replace  the 
ontological  notion  of  the  trinity  by  that  of  a  trinity  of  re- 
velation, which  held  for  him  the  practical  truths  by  which 
his  faith  was  nourished,  and  yet  avoided  the  contradictions 
which  the  other  doctrine  presented  both  to  reason  and  faith. 
Bushnell  would  have  been  far  from  claiming  that  he  was  the 
first  to  make  this  fight.  The  American  Unitarians  had  been 
making  it  for  more  than  a  generation.  The  Unitarian  protest 
was  wholesome.  It  was  magnificent.  It  was  providential, 
but  it  paused  in  negation.  It  never  advanced  to  construction. 
Bushnell's  significance  is  not  that  he  fought  this  battle,  but 
that  he  fought  it  from  the  ranks  of  the  orthodox  Church. 
He  fought  it  with  a  personal  equipment  which  Charming  had 
not  had.  He  was  decades  later  in  his  work.  He  took  up 
the  central  religious  problem  when  Channing's  successors 
were  following  either  Emerson  or  Parker. 

Tlie  Andover  address  consisted  in  the  statement  of  Bush- 
nell's views  of  the  causes  which  had  led  to  the  schism  in  the 
New  England  Church.     A  single  quotation  may  give  the  key- 
note of  the  discourse  : — '  We  had  on  our  side  an  article  of  the  1 
creed  which  asserted  a  metaphysical  trinity.     That  made  the! 
assertion  of  the  metaphysical  unity  inevitable  and  desirable.-! 
We  had  theories  of  atonement,  of  depravity,  of  original  sin, 
which  required  the  appearance  of  antagonistic  theories.     On 
our  side,  theological  culture  was  so  limited  that  we  took  what 
was  really  only  our  own  opinion  for  the  unalterable  truth  of 
God.     On  the  other  side,  it  was  so  limited  that  men,  perceiv- 
ing the  insufficiency  of  dogma,  took  the  opposite  contention 


VI.]  THE  ENGLISH-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  211 

with  the  same  seriousness  and  totahty  of  conviction.  They 
asserted  Hberty,  as  indeed  they  must,  to  vindicate  their  revolt. 
They  produced,  meantime,  the  most  intensely  human  and, 
in  that  sense,  the  most  intensely  opinionated  religion  ever 
invented.' 

The  Catholic  Revival 

The  Oxford  Movement  has  been  spoken  of  as  a  reaction 
against  the  so-called  Oriel  Movement,  a  conservative  tendency 
over  against  an  intellectualist  and  progressive  one.     In  a 
measure  the  personal  animosities  within  the  Oxford  circle 
may  be  accounted  for  in  this  way.     The  Tractarian  Move- 
ment, however,  which  issued,  on  the  one  hand,  in  the  going' 
over  of  Newman  to  the  Church  of  Rome  and,  on  the  other, 
in  a  great  revival  of  Catholic  principles  within  the  Anglicans 
Church  itself,  stands  in  a  far  larger  setting.     It  was  not  merely/ 
an  English  or  insular  movement.     It  was  a  wave  from  a  con- 
tinental flood.     On  its  own  showing  it  was  not  merely  an 
ecclesiastical  movement.     It  had  political  and  social  aims  as 
well.     There  was  a  universal  European  reaction  against  the  | 
Enlightenment  and  the  Revolution.     That  reaction  was  not 
simple,  but  complex.     It  was  a  revolt  of  the  conservative 
spirit  from  the  new  ideals  which  had  been  suddenly  trans- 
lated into  portentous  realities.     It  was  marked  everywhere 
by  hatred  of  the  eighteenth  century  with  all  its  ways  and  . 
works.     On  the  one  side  we  have  the  revolutionary  thesis, 
the  rights  of  man,  the  authority  of  reason,  the  watchwords ' 
liberty,  equality,  fraternity.     On  the  other  side  stood  forth 
those  who  were  prepared  to  assert  the  meaning  of  community, 
the  continuity  of  history,  spiritual  as  well  as  civil  authority 
as  the  basis  of  order,  and  order  as  the  condition  of  the  highest  •  i 
good.     In  literature  the  tendency  appears  as  romanticism,  in 
politics   as   legitimism,   in   religion   as  ultramontanism.     Le* 
Maistre  with  his  UEglise  gallicane  du  Pape  ;    Chateaubriand  - 
with  his  GMe  du  Christianisme  ;    Lamennais  with  his  Essai  ^ 
sur  r Indifference  en  Matiere  de  Religion,  were,  from  1820  to 
1860,  the  exponents  of  a  view  which  has  had  prodigious  con- 
sequences for  France  and  Italy.      The  romantic  movement 


212    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

arose  outside  of  Catholicism.  It  was  impersonated  in  Herder. \ 
Fried  rich  Schlegel,  Werner  and  others  went  over  to  tlie  Roman  | 
Church.  The  poUtical  reaction  was  specifically  Latin  and 
Catholic.  In  the  lurid  light  of  anarchy  Rome  seemed  to  have] 
a  mission  again.  Divine  right  in  the  State  must  be  restored  ' 
through  the  Church.  The  Catholic  apologetic  saw  the  Re- 
volution as  only  the  logical  conclusion  of  the  premises  of  the 
Reformation.  The  religious  revolt  of  the  sixteenth  century, 
tlie  philosophical  revolt  of  the  seventeenth,  the  political 
revolt  of  the  eighteenth,  the  social  revolt  of  the  nineteenth, 
are  all  parts  of  one  dreadful  sequence.  As  the  Church 
lifted  up  the  world  after  the  first  flood  of  the  barbarians, 
so  must  she  again  lift  up  the  world  after  the  devasta- 
tions made  by  the  more  terrible  barbarians  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  England  had  indeed  stood  a  little  outside  of  the 
cyclone  which  had  devastated  the  world  from  Corunna  to 
Moscow  and  from  the  Channel  to  the  Pyramids,  but  she 
had  been  exhausted  in  putting  down  the  revolution.  Only 
God's  goodness  had  preserved  England.  The  logic  of  Puritan- 
ism would  have  been  the  same.  Indeed,  in  England  the 
State  was  weaker  and  worse  than  were  the  states  upon  the 
Continent.  For  since  1688  it  had  been  a  popular  and  con- 
stitutional monarchy.  In  Frederick  William's  phrase,  its 
sovereign  took  his  crown  from  the  gutter.  The  Church  was 
through  and  through  Erastian,  a  creature  of  the  State. 
Bishops  were  made  by  party  representatives.  Acts  like  the 
Reform  Bills,  the  course  of  the  Government  in  the  matter  of 
the  Irish  Church,  were  steps  which  would  surely  bring  England 
to  the  pass  which  France  had  reached  in  1789.  The  source 
of  such  acts  was  wrong.  It  was  with  the  people.  It  was  in 
men,  not  in  God.  It  was  in  reason,  not  in  authority.  It 
would  be  difficult  to  overstate  the  strength  of  this  reactionary 
"sentiment  in  important  circles  in  England  at  the  end  of  the 
third  decade  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

The  Oxford  Movement 

In  so  far  as  that  complex  of  causes  just  alluded  to  made 
of  the  Oxford  Movement  or  the  Catholic  revival  a  movement 


VI.J  THE  ENGLISH-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  213 

of  life,  ecclesiastical,  social  and  political  as  well,  its  history 
falls  outside  the  purpose  of  this  book.  We  proposed  to  deal 
with  the  history  of  thought.  Reactionary  movements  have 
frequently  got  on  ^vithout  much  thought.  They  have  left 
little  deposit  of  their  own  in  the  realm  of  ideas.  Their  avowed 
principle  has  been  that  of  recurrence  to  that  which  has  already 
been  thought,  of  fidelity  to  ideas  which  have  long  prevailed. 
This  is  the  reason  why  the  conservatives  have  not  a 
large  place  in  such  a  sketch  as  this.  It  is  not  that  their 
writings  have  not  often  been  full  of  high  learning  and  of  the 
subtlest  of  reasoning.  It  is  only  that  the  ideas  about  which 
they  reason  do  not  belong  to  the  history  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  They  belong,  on  the  earnest  contention  of  the 
conservatives  themselves — those  of  Protestants,  to  the  history 
of  the  Reformation — and  of  Catholics,  both  AngUcan  and 
Roman,  to  the  history  of  the  early  or  mediaeval  Church. 

Nevertheless,  when  with  passionate  conviction  a  great  man, 
taking  the  reactionary  course,  thinks  the  problem  through  | 
again  from  his  own  point  of  view,  then  we  have  a  real  pheno  i 
menon  in  the  history  of  contemporary  thought.  When  such 
an  one  wrestles  before  God  to  give  reason  to  himself  and  to 
his  fellows  for  the  faith  that  is  in  him,  then  the  reactionary's  j 
reasoning  is  as  imposing  and  suggestive  as  is  any  other.  He 
leaves  in  his  work  an  intellectual  deposit  which  must  be  con- 
sidered. He  makes  a  contribution  which  must  be  reckoned 
with,  even  more  seriously,  perhaps,  by  those  who  dissent  from 
it  than  by  those  who  may  agree  with  it.  Such  deposit  New- 
man and  the  Tractarian  movement  certainly  did  make.  They 
offered  a  rationale  of  the  reaction.  They  gave  to  the  Catholic 
revival  a  standing  in  the  world  of  ideas,  not  merely  in  the 
world  of  action.  Whether  their  reasoning  has  weight  to-day, 
is  a  question  upon  which  opinion  is  divided.  Yet  Newman 
and  his  compeers,  by  their  character  and  standing,  by  their 
distinctively  English  qualities  and  by  the  road  of  reason 
which  they  took  in  the  defence  of  Catholic  principles,  made 
Catholicism  English  again,  in  a  sense  in  which  it  had  not 
been  English  for  three  hundred  years.  Yet  though  Newman 
brought  to  the  Roman  Church  in  England,  on  his  conversion 


214    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

to   it,    a  prestige  and  qualities   which   in   thrt  communion 
were  unequalled,  he  was  never  persona  grata  in  that  Churchy 
Outwardly  the  Roman  Catholic  revival  in  England  was  not  / 
in  large  measure  due  to  Newman  and  his  arguments.     It  was  ' 
due  far  more  to  men  like  Wiseman  and  Manning,  who  were  L 
not  men  of  argument  but  of  deeds.  -^ 


Newman 

John  Henry  Newman  was  born  in  1801,  the  son  of  a  London 
banker.  His  mother  was  of  Huguenot  descent.  He  came 
under  Calvinistic  influence.  Through  study  especially  of 
Romaine  On  Faith  he  became  the  subject  of  an  inward  con- 
version, of  which  in  1864  he  wrote  :  '  T  am  still  more  certain 
of  it  than  that  I  have  hands  and  feet.'  Thomas  Scott,  the 
evangelical,  moved  him.  Before  he  was  sixteen  he  made  a 
collection  of  Scripture  texts  in  proof  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
trinity.  From  Newton  On  the  Prophecies  he  learned  to 
identify  the  Pope  with  anti-Christ^ — a  doctrine  by  which,  he 
adds,  his  imagination  was  stained  up  to  the  year  1843.  In  his 
Apologia,  1866,  he  declares :  'From  the  age  of  fifteen,  dogma 
has  been  a  fundamental  principle  of  my  religion.  I  cannot 
enter  into  the  idea  of  any  other  sort  of  religion.'  At  the  age 
of  twenty-one,  two  years  after  he  had  taken  his  degree,  he 
came  under  very  different  influences.  He  passed  from 
Trinity  College  to  a  fellowship  in  Oriel.  To  use  his  own 
phrase,  he  drifted  in  the  direction  of  liberalism.  He  was 
touched  by  Whately.  He  was  too  logical,  and  also  too 
dogmatic,  to  be  satisfied  with  Whately's  position.  Of  the 
years  from  1823  to  1827  Mozley  says  :  '  Probably  no  one 
who  then  knew  Newman  could  have  told  which  way  he  would 
go.  It  is  not  certain  that  he  himself  knew.'  Francis  W. 
Newman,  Newman's  brother,  who  later  became  a  Unitarian, 
remembering  his  own  years  of  stress,  speaks  with  embitter- 
ment  of  his  elder  brother,  who  was  profoundly  uncongenial 
to  him. 

The  year  1827,  in  which  Keble's  Christian  Year  was  pub- 
lished, saw  another  change  in  Newman's  views.     Illness  and 


VI.]  THE  ENGLISH-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  215 

bereavement  came  to  liim  with  awakening  effect.  He  made  < 
the  acquaintance  of  Hurrell  Froude.  Froude  brought 
Newman  and  Keble  together.  Henceforth  Newman  bore  no/ 
more  traces  either  of  evangehcahsm  or  of  hberahsm.  Of  Froude/ 
it  is  difficult  to  speak  with  confidence.  His  brother,  James 
Anthony  Froude,  the  historian,  author  of  the  Nemesis  of  Faith, 
1848,  says  that  he  was  gifted,  brilliant,  enthusiastic.  Newman 
speaks  of  him  with  almost  boundless  praise.  Two  volumes 
of  his  sermons,  published  after  his  death  in  1836,  make  the 
impression  neither  of  learning  nor  judgment.  Clearly  he 
had  charm.  Possibly  he  talked  himself  into  a  common- 
room  reputation.  Newman  says :  '  Froude  made  me  look  I 
with  admiration  toward  the  Church  of  Rome.'  Keble  never  > 
had  felt  the  liberalism  through  which  Newman  had  pass'ed. 
Cradled  as  the  Church  of  England  had  been  in  Puritanism, 
the  latter  was  to  him  simply  evil.  Opinions  differing  from 
his  OAvn  were  not  simply  mistaken,  they  were  sinful.  He 
conceived  no  religious  truth  outside  the  Church  of  England.  '- 
In  the  Christian  Year  one  perceives  an  influence  which 
Newman  strongly  felt.  It  was  that  of  the  idea  of  the  sacra- 
mental significance  of  all  natural  objects  or  events.  Pusey^ 
became  professor  of  Hebrew  in  1830.  He  lent  the  movement^ 
academic  standing,  which  the  others  could  not  give.  He 
had  been  in  Germany,  and  had  published  an  Inquiry  into  the 
Rationalist  Character  of  German  Theology,  1825.  He  hardly 
did  more  than  expose  the  ignorance  of  Rose.  He  was  himself 
denounced  as  a  German  rationalist  who  dared  to  speak  of  a 
new  era  in  theology.  Pusey,  mourning  the  defection  of 
Newman,  whom  he  deeply  loved,  gathered  in  1846  the  forces 
of  the  Anglo-Catholics  and  continued  in  some  sense  a  leader 
to  the  end  of  his  long  life  in  1882. 

The  course  of  political  events  was  fretting  the  Conser- 
vatives intolerably.  The  agitation  for  the  Reform  Bill  was 
taking  shape.  Sir  Robert  Peel,  the  member  for  Oxford,  had 
introduced  a  Bill  for  the  emancipation  of  the  Roman  Catholics. 
There  was  violent  commotion  in  Oxford.  Keble  and  New-  | 
man  strenuously  opposed  the  measure.  In  1830  there  was 
revolution  in  France.     In  England  the  Whigs  had  come  into 


216    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

power.  Newman's  mind  was  excited  in  the  last  degree.  *  The 
vital  question,'  he  says,  *  is  this,  how  are  we  to  keep  the  Church 
of  England  from  being  liberalised  ?  '  At  the  end  of  1832 
Newman  and  Froude  went  abroad  together.  On  this  journey, 
as  he  lay  becalmed  in  the  straits  of  Bonifacio,  he  wrote  his 
immortal  hymn,  '  Lead,  KLindly  Light.'  He  came  home 
assured  that  he  had  a  work  to  do.  Keble's  Assize  Sermon  on 
the  National  Apostasy,  preached  in  July  1833,  on  the  Sunday 
after  Newman's  return  to  Oxford,  kindled  the  conflagration 
which  had  been  long  preparing.  Newman  conceived  the  idea 
of  the  Tracts  for  the  Times  as  a  means  of  expressing  the 
feelings  and  propagating  the  opinions  which  deeply  moved 
him.  *  From  the  first,'  he  says, '  my  battle  was  with  liberalism. 
By  liberalism  I  mean  the  anti-dogmatic  principle.  Secondly, 
my  aim  was  the  assertion  of  the  visible  Church  with  sacra- 
ments and  rites  and  definite  religious  teaching  on  the  founda- 
tion of  dogma ;  and  thirdly,  the  assertion  of  the  Anglican 
Church  as  opposed  to  the  Church  of  Rome.'  Newman  grew 
greatly  in  personal  influence.  His  afternoon  sermons  at 
St.  Mary's  exerted  spiritual  power.  They  deserved  so  to  do. 
Here  he  was  at  his  best.  All  of  his  strength  and  httle  of  his 
weakness  shows.  His  insight,  his  subtility,  his  pathos,  his 
love  of  souls,  his  marvellous  play  of  dramatic  as  well  as  of 
spiritual  faculty,  are  in  evidence.  Keble  and  Pusey  were 
busying  themselves  with  the  historical  aspects  of  the  question. 
Pusey  began  the  Library  of  the  Fathers,  the  most  elaborate 
literary  monument  of  the  movement.  Nothing  could  be 
more  amazing  than  the  uncritical  quality  of  the  whole  per- 
formance. The  first  check  to  the  movement  came  in  1838, 
when  the  Bishop  of  Oxford  animadverted  upon  the  Tracts. 
Newman  professed  his  willingness  to  stop  them.  The  Bishop 
did  not  insist.  Newman's  own  thought  moved  rapidly  on- 
ward in  the  only  course  which  was  still  open  to  it. 

Newman  had  been  bred  in  the  deepest  reverence  for  Scrip- 
ture. Li  a  sense  that  reverence  never  left  him,  though  it 
changed  its  form.  He  saw  that  it  was  absurd  to  appeal  to  the 
Bible  in  the  old  way  as  an  infallible  source  of  doctrine.  How 
could  truth  be  infallibly  conveyed  in  defe(?tive  and  fallible 


VI.]  THE  ENGLISH-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  217 

expressions  ?  Newman's  own  studies  in  criticism,  by  no 
means  profound,  led  him  to  this  correct  conclusion.  This! 
was  the  end  for  him  of  evangelical  Protestantism.  The  re-f 
course  was  then  to  the  infallible  Church.  Infallible  guide 
and  authority  one  must  have.  Without  these  there  can  be 
no  religion.  To  trust  to  reason  and  conscience  as  conveying 
something  of  the  light  of  God  is  impossible.  To  wait  in 
patience  and  to  labour  in  fortitude  for  the  increase  of  that 
light  is  unendurable.  One  must  have  certainty.  There 
can  be  no  certainty  by  the  processes  of  the  mind  from 
within.  This  can  come  only  by  miraculous  certification  from 
without. 

According  to  Newman  the  authority  of  the  Church  should! 
never  have  been  impaired  in  the  Reformation.     Or  rather, 
in  his  view  of  that  movement,  this  authority,  for  truly  Chris 
tian  men,  had  never  been  impaired.     The  intellect  is  aggres-\ 
sive,  capricious,  untrustworthy.    Its  action  in  religious  matters ) 
is  corrosive,  dissolving,  sceptical.     '  Man's  energy  of  intellect 
must  be  smitten  hard  and  thrown  back  by  infallible  authority,! 
if  religion  is  to  be  saved  at  all.'     Newman's  philosophy  was/ 
utterly  sceptical,  although,  unlike  most  absolute  philosophical 
sceptics,   he  had   a   deep   religious    experience.     The    most 
complete   secularist,  in   his   negation  of  religion,  does  not 
differ  from  Newman  in  his  low  opinion  of  the  value  of  the 
surmises  of  the  mind  as  to  the  transcendental  meaning  of  life/ 
and  the  world.     He  differs  from  Newman  only  in  lacking  that ' 
which  to  Newman  was  the  most  indefeasible  thing  which 
he  had  at  all,  namely,  religious  experience.     Newman  was  I 
the  child  of  his  age,  though  no  one  ever  abused  more  fiercely 
the  age  of  which  he  was  the  child.     He  supposed  that  he 
believed  in  religion  on  the  basis  of  authority.     Quite  the  con- 
trary, he  believed  in  religion  because  he  had  religion  or,  as 
he  says,  in  a  magnificent  passage  in  one  of  his  parochial 
sermons,  because  religion  had  him.     His  scepticism  forbade 
him  to  recognise  that  this  was  the  basis  of  his  belief.     His 
diremption  of  human  nature  was  absolute.     The  soul  was  of 
God.      The  mind  was  of  the  devil.      He  dare  not  trust  his  ^ 
own   intellect  concerning    this   inestimable   treasuve  of    his 


218    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

experience.  He  dare  not  trust  intellect  at  all.  He  knew 
not  whither  it  might  lead  him.  The  mind  cannot  be  broken 
to  the  belief  of  a  power  above  it.  It  must  have  its  stiff  neck 
bent  to  recognise  its  Creator. 

His  whole  book,  The  Grammar  of  Assent,  1870,  is  pervaded 
by  the  intensest  philosophical  scepticism.  Scepticism  supplies 
its  motives,  determines  its  problems,  necessitates  its  dis- 
tinctions, rules  over  the  succession  and  gradation  of  its 
arguments.  The  whole  aim  of  the  work  is  to  withdraw 
religion  and  the  proofs  of  it,  from  the  region  of  reason  into  the 
realm  of  conscience  and  imagination,  where  the  arguments 
which  reign  may  satisfy  personal  experience  without  alleging 
objective  validity  or  being  able  to  bear  the  criticism  which 
tests  it.  Again,  he  is  the  perverse,  unconscious  child  of  the 
age  which  he  curses.  Had  not  Kant  and  Schleiermacher, 
Coleridge  and  Charming  sought,  does  not  Ritschl  seek,  to 
remove  religion  from  the  realm  of  metaphysics  and  to  bring 
it  within  the  realm  of  experience  ?  They  had,  however 
pursued  the  same  end  by  different  means.  One  is  reminded 
of  that  saying  of  Gretchen  concerning  Mephistopheles  :  '  He 
says  the  same  thing  with  the  pastor,  only  in  different  words.' 
Newman  says  the  same  words,  but  means  a  different  thing.)  ^ 

Assuming  the  reduction  of  religion  to  experience,  in  which 
Kant  and  Schleiermacher  would  have  agreed,  and  asserting 
the  worthlessness  of  mentality,  which  they  would  have  denied, 
we  are  not  surprised  to  hear  Newman  say  that  without 
Catholicism  doubt  is  invincible.  *  The  Church's  infallibility 
is  the  provision  adopted  by  the  mercy  pf  the  Creator  to 
preserve  religion  in  the  world.  Outside  the  Catholic  Church 
all  things  tend  to  atheism.  The  Catholic  Church  is  the  one 
face  to  face  antagonist,  able  to  withstand  and  baffle  the  fierce 
energy  of  passion  and  the  all-dissolving  scepticism  of  the  mind. 
I  am  a  Catholic  by  virtue  of  my  belief  in  God.  If  I  should  be/ 
asked  why  I  believe  in  God,  I  should  answer,  because  I  believe/ 
in  myself.  I  fmd  it  impossible  to  believe  in  myself,  without, 
believing  also  in  the  existence  of  him  who  lives  as  a  personal,^ 
all-seeing,  all-judging  being  in  my  conscience.'  These  passages 
are  mainly  taken  from  the  Apologia,  written  long  after  New- 


VI.]  THE  ENGLISH-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  219 

man  had  gone  over  to  the  Roman  Church.     They  perfectly 
describe  the  attitude  of  his  mind  toward  the  AngUcan  Church, 
so  long  as  he  beheyed  this,  and  not  the  Roman,  to  be  the  true 
Church.     He  had  once  thought  that  a  man  could  hold  a 
position  midway  between  the  Protestantism  which  he  re- 
pudiated and  the  Romanism  which   he  still  resisted.      He 
stayed  in  the  via  media  so  long  as  he  could.     But  in  1839  he 
began  to  have  doubts  about  the  Anglican  order  of  succession,  i 
The  catholicity  of  Rome  began  to  overshadow  the  apostolicity  j 
of   Anglicanism.     The   Anglican   formularies    cannot   be   at 
variance  with  the  teachings  of  the  authoritative  and  universal  I 
Church.     This  is  the  problem  which  the  last  of  the  Tracts, 
Tract  Ninety,  sets  itself.     It  is  one  of  those  which  Newman 
WTote.     One  must  find  the  sense  of  the  Roman  Church  in  tYieJ 
Thirty-Nine  Articles.     This  tract  is  prefaced  by  an  extra- 
ordinary disquisition  upon  reserve  in  the  communication  of 
religious  knowledge.     God's  revelations  of   himself  to  man- 
kind have  always  been  a  kind  of  veil.     Truth  is  the  reward 
of  holiness.     The  Fathers  were  holy  men.     Therefore  whaV) 
the  Fathers  said  must  be  true.     The  principle  of  reserve  the 
Articles  illustrate.     They  do  not  mean  what  they  say.     They 
were  written  in  an  uncatholic  age,  that  is,  in  the  age  of  the 
Reformation.     They   were  written   by   Catholic   men.     Else/ 
how  can  the  Church  of  England  be  now  a  Catholic  Churchjj 
Through  their  reserve  they  were  acceptable  in  an  uncatholic 
age.     They  cannot  be  uncatholic  in  spirit,  else  how  should 
they  be  identical  in  meaning  with  the  great  Catholic  creeds  ? 
Then  follows  an  exposition  of  every  important  article  of  the 
thirty-nine,  an  effort  to  interpret  each  in  the  sense  of  the^,' 
Roman  Catholic  Church  of  to-day.     Four  tutors  published  ' 
a  protest  against  the  tract.     Formal  censure  was  passed  upon 
it.     It  was  now  evident  to  Newman  that  his  place  in  the 
leadership  of  the  Oxford  Movement  was  gone.     From  this  i 
time,  the  spring  of  1841,  he  says  he  was  on  his  deathbed  as 
regards  the  Church  of  England.     He  withdrew  to  Littlemore 
and   established   a   brotherhood   there.     In   the   autumn   of 
1843  he  resigned  the  parochial  charge  of  St.  Mary's  at  Oxford. 
On  the  9th  of  October  1845  he  was  formally  admitted  to  the 


220    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [oh. 

Roman  Church.     On  the  6th  of  October  Ernest  Renan  had 
formally  severed  his  connexion  with  that  Church. 

It  is  a  strange  thing  that  in  his  Essay  on  the  Develop- 
ment of  Christian  Doctrine,  written  in  1845,  Newman 
himself  should  have  advanced  substantially  Hampden's 
contention.  Here  are  written  many  things  concerning 
the  development  of  doctrine  which  commend  themselves 
to  minds  conversant  with  the  application  of  historical  criti- 
cism to  the  whole  dogmatic  structure  of  the  Christian 
ages.  The  purpose  is  with  Newman  entirely  polemical, 
the  issue  exactly  that  which  one  would  not  have  foreseen. 
Precisely  because  the  development  of  doctrine  is  so  obvious, 
because  no  historical  point  can  be  found  at  which  the 
growth  of  doctrine  ceased  and  the  rule  of  faith  was  once 
for  all  settled,  therefore  an  infallible  authority  outside  of 
the  development  must  have  existed  from  the  beginning, 
to  provide  a  means  of  distinguishing  true  development 
from  false.  This  infallible  guide  is,  of  course,  the  Church. 
It  seems  incredible  that  Newman  could  escape  applying  to 
the  Church  the  same  argument  which  he  had  so  skilfully 
applied  to  Scripture  and  dogmatic  history.  Similar  is  the 
case  with  the  argument  of  the  Grammar  of  Assent.  '  No  man 
is  certain  of  a  truth  who  can  endure  the  thought  of  its  con- 
trary.' If  the  reason  why  I  cannot  endure  the  thought  of 
the  contradictory  of  a  belief  which  I  have  made  my  own,  is 
that  so  to  think  brings  me  pain  and  darkness,  this  does  not 
prove  my  truth.  If  my  belief  ever  had  its  origin  in  reason, 
it  must  be  ever  refutable  by  reason.  It  is  not  corroborated 
by  the  fact  that  I  do  not  wish  to  see  anything  that  would 
refute  it.^  This  last  fact  may  be  in  the  highest  degree  an  act 
of  arbitrariness.  To  make  the  impossibihty  of  thinking  the 
opposite,  the  test  of  truth,  and  then  to  shut  one's  eyes  to  those 
evidences  which  might  compel  one  to  think  the  opposite, 
is  the  essence  of  irrationality.  One  attains  by  this  method 
indefinite  assertiveness,  but  not  certainty.  Newman  lived 
in  some  seclusion  in  the  Oratory  of  St.  Philip  Neri  in  Birming- 
ham for  many  years.  A  few  distinguished  men,  and  a 
1  Fairbairn,  Catholicism,  Roman  and  Anglican,  p.  167  f. 


VI.]  THE  ENGLISH-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  221 

number  of  his  followers,  in  all  not  more  than  a  hundred 
and  fifty,  went  over  to  the  Roman  Church  after  him.  The 
defection  was  never  so  great  as,  in  the  first  shock,  it  was  sup- 
posed that  it  would  be.  The  outward  influence  of  Newman 
upon  the  xA.nglican  Church  then  ceased.  But  the  ideas  which 
he  put  forth  have  certainly  been  of  great  influence  in  that 
Church  to  this  day.  Most  men  know  the  portrait  of  the  great 
cardinal,  the  wide  forehead,  ploughed  deep  with  horizontal 
furrows,  the  pale  cheek,  down  which '  long  lines  of  shadow  slope,  , 
which  years  and  anxious  thought  and  suffering  give.'  One 
looks  into  the  wonderful  face  of  those  last  days — Newman 
lived  to  his  ninetieth  year — and  wonders  if  he  found  in  the 
infallible  Church  the  peace  which  he  so  earnestly  sought. 

Modernism 

It  was  said  that  the  Oxford  Movement  furnished  the 
rationale  of  the  reaction.  Many  causes,  of  course,  combine 
to  make  the  situation  of  the  Roman  Church  and  the  status 
of  religion  in  the  Latin  countries  of  the  Continent  the  lament- 
able one  that  it  is.  That  position  is  worst  in  those  countries  | 
where  the  Roman  Church  has  most  nearly  had  free  play. 
The  alienation  both  of  the  intellectual  and  civil  life  from 
organised  religion  is  grave.  That  the  Roman  Church  occupies 
in  England  to-day  a  position  more  favourable  than  in  almost 
any  nation  on  the  Continent,  and  better  than  it  occupied  in 
England  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century,  is  due  j 
in  large  measure  to  the  general  influence  of  the  movement 
with  which  we  have  been  dealing.  The  Anglican  Churcli 
was  at  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  preponder- 
antly evangelical,  low -church  and  conscious  of  itself  as 
Protestant.  At  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  it  is  dom-\ 
inantly  ritualistic  and  disposed  to  minimise  its  relation  to  1 
the  Reformation.  This  resurgence  of  Catholic  principles  is 
another  effect  of  the  movement  of  which  we  speak.  Other 
factors  must  have  wrought  for  this  result  besides  the  body 
of  arguments  which  Newman  and  his  compeers  offered. 
The  argument   itself,    the   mere   intellectual   factor,    is   not 


222    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

adequate.  There  is  an  inherent  contradiction  in  the  effort 
to  ground  in  reason  an  authority  which  is  to  take  the  place 
of  reason.  Yet  round  and  round  this  circle  all  the  labours, 
of  John  Henry  Newman  go.  Cardinal  Manning  felt  this./ 
The  victory  of  the  Church  was  not  to  be  won  by  argument. 
It  is  well  known  that  Newman  opposed  the  decree  of  infalli- 
biUty.  It  cannot  be  said  that  upon  this  point  his  arguments 
had  great  weight.  If  one  assumes  that  truth  comes  to  us 
externally  through  representatives  of  God,  and  if  the  truth 
is  that  which  they  assert,  then  in  the  last  analysis  what  they 
assert  is  truth.  If  one  has  given  in  to  such  authority  because 
one  distrusts  his  reason,  then  it  is  querulous  to  complain  that 
the  deliverances  of  authority  do  not  comport  with  reason. 
There  may  be,  of  course,  the  greatest  interest  in  the  struggle 
as  to  the  instance  in  which  this  authority  is  to  be  lodged. 
This  interest  attaches  to  the  age-long  struggle  between 
Pope  and  Council.  It  attaches  to  the  dramatic  struggle  of, 
Dollinger,  Dupanloup,  Lord  Acton  and  the  rest,  in  1870.  | 
Once  the  Church  has  spoken  there  is,  for  the  advocate  of 
authoritative  religion,  no  logic  but  to  submit. 

Similarly  as  to  the  Encyclical  and  Syllabus  of  Errors  of  1864, ) 
which  forecast  the  present  conflict  concerning  Modernism. 
The  Syllabus  had  a  different  atmosphere  from  that  which 
any  Englishman  in  the  sixties  would  have  given  it.      Had 
not   Newman,    however,   made    passionate  warfare   on   the 
liberalism  of  the  modem  world  ?     Was  it  not  merely  a  ques- 
tion of  degrees  ?    Was  Gladstone's  attitude  intelligible  ?    The  ) 
contrast  of  two  principles  in  life  and  religion,  the  principles 
of  authority  and  of  the   spirit,  is   being  brought  home  to 
men's  consciousness  as  it  has  never  been  before.     One  reads 
II  Santo  and  learns  concerning  the  death  of  Fogazzaro,  one^ 
looks  into  the  literature  relating  to  Tyrrell,  one  sees  the  fate 
of  Loisy,  comparing  the  really  majestic  achievement  in  his 
works  and  the  spirit  of  his  Simple  Reflections  witYi  the  Encyclical 
Pascendi,  1907.     One  understands  why  these  men  have  done 
what  they  could  to  remain  within  the  Roman  Church.     One 
recalls  the  attitude  of  Dollinger  to  the  inauguration  of  the  Old? 
Catholic  Movement,  reflects  upon  the  relative  futility  of  the 


VI.]  THE  ENGLISH-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  223 

Old  Catholic  Church,  and  upon  the  position  of  Hyacinthe 
Loyson.  One  appreciates  the  feeling  of  these  men  that  it  is 
impossible,  from  without,  to  influence  as  they  would  the  Church 
which  they  have  loved.  The  present  difficulty  of  influencing 
it  from  within  seems  almost  insuperable.  The  history  of 
Modernism  as  an  effective  contention  in  the  world  of  Chris- 
tian thought  seems  scarcely  begun.  The  opposition  to 
Modernism  is  not  yet  a  part  of  the  history  of  thought. 


Robertson 

In  no  life  are  reflected  more  perfectly  the  spiritual  con- 
flicts of  the  fifth  decade  of  the  nineteenth  century  than  in  that 
of  Frederick  W.  Robertson.  No  mind  worked  itself  more 
triumphantly  out  of  these  difficulties.  Descended  from  a 
family  of  Scottish  soldiers,  evangelical  in  piety,  a  student 
in  Oxford  in  1837,  repelled  by  the  Oxford  Movement,  he) 
undertook  his  ministry  under  a  morbid  sense  of  responsi- 
bility. He  reacted  violently  against  his  evangelicalism.  He-~- 
travelled  abroad,  read  enormously,  was  plunged  into  an 
agony  which  threatened  mentally  to  undo  him.  He  took 
his  charge  at  Brighton  in  1847,  still  only  thirty-one  years 
old,  and  at  once  shone  forth  in  the  splendour  of  his  genius. 
A  martyr  to  disease  and  petty  persecution,  dying  at  thirty- 
seven,  he  yet  left  the  impress  of  one  of  the  greatest 
preachers  whom  the  Church  of  England  has  produced.  He 
left  no  formal  literary  work  such  as  he  had  designed.  Of 
his  sermons  we  have  almost  none  from  his  own  manu- 
scripts. Yet  his  influence  is  to-day  almost  as  intense  as 
when  the  sermons  were  delivered.  It  is,  before  all,  the 
wealth  and  depth  of  his  thought,  the  reality  of  the  content 
of  the  sermons,  which  commands  admiration.  They  are 
a  classic  refutation  of  the  remark  that  one  cannot  preach 
theology.  Out  of  them,  even  in  their  fragmentary  state,  aT] 
well-articulated  system  might  be  made.  He  brought  to  his  ^ 
age  the  living  message  of  a  man  upon  whom  the  best  light 
of  his  age  had  shone. 


224    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

Phillips  Brooks 

Something  of  the  same  sort  may  be  said  concerning  PhilHps 
Brooks.  He  inherited  on  his  father's  side  the  sober  ration-  ; 
ahsm  and  the  humane  and  secular  interest  of  the  earUer  \ 
Unitarianism,  on  his  mother's  side  the  intensity  of  evangehcal 
pietism  with  the  Calvinistic  form  of  thought.  The  conflict 
of  theft  opposing  tendencies  in  New  England  was  at  that 
time  so  great  that  Brooks's  parents  sought  refuge  with  the 
low-church  element  in  the  Episcopal  Church.  Brooks's 
education  at  Harvard  College,  where  he  took  his  degree 
in  1855,  as  also  at  Alexandria,  and  still  more,  his  reading 
and  experience,  made  him  sympathetic  with  that  which,  inl 
England  in  those  years,  was  called  the  Broad  Church  party.' 
He  was  deeply  influenced  by  Campbell  and  Maurice.  Later  ] 
well  known  in  England,  he  was  the  compeer  of  the  best 
spirits  of  his  generation  there.  Deepened  by  the  experience 
of  the  great  war,  he  held  in  succession  two  pulpits  of  large 
influence,  dying  as  Bishop  of  Massachusetts  in  1893.  There 
is  a  theological  note  about  his  preaching,  as  in  the  case  of 
Robertson.  Often  it  is  the  same  note.  Brooks  had  passed 
through  no  such  crisis  as  had  Robertson.  He  had  flowered 
into  the  greatness  of  rational  belief.  His  sermons  are  a 
contribution  to  the  thinking  of  his  age.  We  have  much 
finished  material  of  this  kind  from  his  own  hand,  and  a 
book  or  two  besides.  His  service  through  many  years  as 
preacher  to  his  university  was  of  inestimable  worth.  The 
presentation  of  ever-advancing  thought  to  a  great  public 
constituency  is  one  of  the  most  diflicult  of  tasks.  It  is  also 
one  of  the  most  necessary.  The  fusion  of  such  thoughtful- 
ness  with  spiritual  impulse  has  rarely  been  more  perfectly 
achieved  than  in  the  preaching  of  Phillips  Brooks. 

The  Broad  Church 

We  have  used  the  phrase,  the  Broad  Church  party.     Stanley  1 
had  employed  the  adjective  to  describe  the  real  character  of 
the  English  Church,  over  against  the  antithesis  of  the  Low 


VI.]  THE  ENGLISH-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  225 

Church  and  the  High.     The  designation  adhered  to  a  group 
of  which  Stanley  was  himself  a  type.     They  were  not  bound 
together  in  a  party.     They  had  no  ecclesiastical  end  in  view. 
They  w^ere  of  a  common  spirit.     It  was  not   the  spirit  of| 
evangelicalism.     Still  less  was  it  that  of  the  Tractarians.     It 
was  that  which  Robertson  had  manifested.     It  aimed  to  hold\ 
the  faith  with  an  open  mind  in  all  the  intellectual  movement 
of  the  age.     Maurice  should  be  enumerated  here,  witj  resef^i 
vations.     Kingsley  beyond  question  belonged  to  this  group. 
There  was  great  ardour  among  them  for  the  improvement  of 
social  conditions,  a  sense  of  the  social  mission  of  Christianity. 
There  grew  up  what  was  called  a  Christian  SociaUst  move^ 
ment,  which,  however,  never  attained  or  sought  a  political 
standing.     The   Broad    Church    movement    seemed,   at  one 
time,  assured  of  ascendancy  in  the  Church  of  England.     Its 
aims  appeared  congruous  with  the  spirit  of  the  times.     Yet 
Dean  Fremantle  esteems  himself  perhaps  the  last  survivor 
of  an  illustrious  company. 

The  men  who  in   1860  published  the  volume  known  as"" 
Essays  and  Reviews  would  be  classed  with  the  Broad  Church.  ^ 
In   its   authorship   were   associated   seven   scholars,    mostly 
Oxford  men.     Some  one  described  Essays   and  Reviews   as 
the  Tra4:,t  Ninety  of  the   Broad  Church.     It  stirred  pubhc 
sentiment    and    brought    the    authors    into    conflict    wdth 
authority  in  a  somewhat  similar  way.     The  living  antagonisrn" 
of  the  Broad  Church  was  surely  with  the  Tractarians  rather 
than  with  the  evangelicals.     Yet  the  most  significant  of  the 
essays,  those  on  miracles  and  on  prophecy,  touched  opinion^ 
common   to    both   these    groups.     Jowett,    later    Master    ofl 
Bailiol,   contributed    an    essay    on    the    'Interpretation    of 
Scripture.'     It  hardly  belongs  to  Jowett's  best  work.      Yet 
the    controversy    then   precipitated   may   have    had   to   do 
with  Jowett's  adherence  to  Platonic  studies  instead  of  his 
devoting    himself  to   theology.     The   most    decisive   of   the 
papers  was   that  of   Baden   Powell   on   the  '  Study   of  the] 
Evidences  of  Christianity.'     It  was  mainly  a  discussion  of 
the    miracle.     It    was    radical    and   conclusive.     The  essay 
closes  with  an  allusion  to  Darwin's  Origin  of  Species,  which 

P 


226    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

had  then  just  appeared.     Baden  Powell  died  shortly  after  its 
publication.     The  fight  came  on  Rowland  Williams's  paper! 
upon  Bunsen's  Biblical  Researches.     It  was  really  upon  the 
prophecies  and  their  use  in  '  Christian  Evidences.'     Baron 
Bunsen  was  not  a  great  archaeologist,  but  he  brought  to  the 
attention  of  English  readers  that  which  was  being  done  in 
Germany    in    this    field.     Williams    used    the    archaeologicaF] 
material  to  rectify  the  current  theological  notions  concerning 
ancient  history.     A  certain  type  of  English  mind  has  always 
shown  zeal  for  the  interpretation  of  prophecy.     Williams's 
thesis,  briefly  put,  was  this  :    the  Bible  does  not  always  give^ 
the  history  of  the  past  with  accuracy  ;  it  does  not  give  the  I 
history  of  the  future  at  all ;  prophecy  means  spiritual  teach- 
ing, not  secular  prognostication.     A  reader  of  our  day  may 
naturally  feel  that  Wilson,  with  his  paper  on  the  '  National 
Church,'  made  the  greatest  contribution.     He  built  indeed 
upon  Coleridge,  but  he  had  a  larger  horizon.     He  knew  the 
arguments  of  the  great  Frenchmen  of  his  day  and  of  their 
English  imitators  who,  in  Benn's  phrase,  narrowed  and  per- 
verted the  ideal  of  a  world-wide  humanity  into  that  of  a 
Church   founded  on  dogmas  and  administered  by  clericals. 
Wilson   argued    that  in   Jesus'    teaching    the   basis   of   the 
religious    community  is   ethical.     The    Church    is    but   the] 
instrument  for  carrying  out  the  will  of  God  as  manifest  in^ 
the  moral  law.     The  realisation  of  the  mil   of    God   must 
extend  beyond  the  limits  of  the  Church's  activity,  however 
widely  these  are  drawn.     There  arose  a  violent  agitation. 
Williams  and  Wilson  were  prosecuted.     The  case  was  tried 
in   the   Court   of   Arches.     Williams   was    defended   by    nd^ 
less   a  person   than  Fitzjames  Stephen.     The    two    divines' 
were  sentenced  to  a  year's  suspension.     This   decision   was 
reversed  by  the   Lord  Chancellor.     Fitzjames  Stephen  had 
argued  that  if  the  men  most  interested  in  the  Church,  namely^ 
its  clergy,  are  the  only  men  who  may  be  punished  for  serious  \ 
discussion  of  the  facts  and  truths  of  religion,  then  respect 
on  the  part  of  the  world  for  the  Church  is  at  an  end.     By 
this  discussion  the  English  clergy,   even  if  Anglo-Catholic, 
are  in  a  very  different  position  from   the  Roman  priests, 


VI.]  THE  ENGLISH-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  227 

over  whom   encyclicals,   even   if  not  executed,   are  always 
suspended. 

Similar  was  the  issue  in  the  case  of  Colenso,  Bishop  of  Natal. 
Equipped  mainly  with  Cambridge  mathematics  added  to  purest 
self-devotion,  he  had  been  sent  out  as  a  missionary  bishop.  In 
the  process  of  the  translation  of  the  Pentateuch  for  his  Zulus, 
he  had  come  to  reflect  upon  the  problem  which  the  Old  Testa- 
ment presents.  In  a  manner  which  is  altogether  marvellous 
he  worked  out  critical  conclusions  parallel  to  those  of  Old 
Testament  scholars  on  the  Continent.  He  was  never  really 
an  expert,  but  in  his  main  contention  he  was  right.  He 
adhered  to  his  opinion  despite  severe  pressure  and  was  not 
removed  from  the  episcopate.  With  such  guarantees  it  would 
be  strange  indeed  if  we  could  not  say  that  biblical  studies 
entered  in  Great  Britain,  as  also  in  America,  on  a  development 
in  which  scholars  of  these  nations  are  not  behind  the  best 
scholars  of  the  world.  The  trials  for  heresy  of  RobertsonS 
Smith  in  Edinburgh  and  of  Dr.  Briggs  in  New  York  have  now  "^ 
httle  Uving  interest.  Yet  biblical  studies  in  Scotland  and 
America  were  incalculably  furthered  by  those  discussions.  The 
publication  of  a  book  like  Supernatural  Religion,  1872,  illus- 
trates a  prochvity  not  uncommon  in  self-conscious  liberal 
circles,  for  taking  up  a  contention  just  when  those  who  made 
it  and  have  lived  with  it  have  decided  to  lay  it  down.  How- 
ever, the  names  of  Hatch  and  Lightfoot  alone,  not  to  mention 
the  living,  are  sufficient  to  warrant  the  assertions  above  made. 


More  than  once  in  these  chapters  we  have  spoken  of  the 
service  rendered  to  the  progress  of  Christian  thought  by  the 
criticism  and  interpretation  of  religion  at  the  hands  of  literary 
men.  That  country  and  age  may  be  esteemed  fortunate  in 
which  religion  occupies  a  place  such  that  it  compels  the  atten- 
tion of  men  of  genius.  In  the  history  of  culture  this  has 
by  no  means  always  been  the  case.  That  these  men  do  not 
always  speak  the  language  of  edification  is  of  minor  con- 
sequence.    What    is   of  infinite  worth   is  that   the   largest 


228    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

minds  of  the  generation  shall  engage  themselves  with  the 
topic  of  religion.  A  history  of  thought  concerning  Chris- 
tianity cannot  but  reckon  with  the  opinions,  for  example,  of 
Carlyle,  of  Emerson,  of  Matthew  Arnold — to  mention  only 
types. 


Carlyle 

Carlyle  has  pictured  for  us  his  early  home  at  Ecclefechan 
on  the  Border;  his  father,  a  stone  mason  of  the  highest  char-  J 
acter  ;   his  mother  with  her  frugal,  pious  ways  ;  the  minister^, 
from  whom  he  learned  Latin,   '  the  priestliest  man  I  everi  / 
beheld  in  any  ecclesiastical  guise.*     The  picture  of  his  mother 
never  faded  from  his  memory.     Carlyle  was  destined  for  the 
Church.     Such  had  been  his  mother's  prayer.     He  took  hisi 
arts  course  in  Edinburgh.     In  the  university,  ne  says,  '  there 
was  much  talk  about  progress  of  the  species,  dark  ages,  and! 
the  like,  but  the  hungry  young  looked  to  their  spiritual  nurses 
and  were  bidden  to  eat  the  east  wind.'     He  entered  Divinity 
Hall,  but  already,  in  1816,  prohibitive  doubts  had  arisen  in  his 
mind.     Irving  sought  to  help  him.     Irving  was  not  the  man) 
for  the  task.     The  Christianity  of  the  Church  had  become  in-i 
tellectually  incredible  to  Carlyle.     For  a  time  he  was  acutely 
miserable,   bordering   upon  despair.     He  has  described  hisl 
spiritual  deliverance  :    '  Precisely  that   befel   me  which  the  J 
Methodists  call  their  conversion,  the  deliverance  of  their  souls  I 
from  the  devil  and  the  pit.     There  burst  forth  a  sacred  flame' 
of  joy  in   me.'     With  Sartor  Resartus  his   message   to   the 
world  began.     It  was  printed  in  Fraser^s  Magazine  in  1833, 
but  not  published   separately  until  1838.     His  difficulty  in 
finding  a  publisher  embittered  him.     Style  had  something 
to  do  with  this,  the  newness  of  his  message  had  more.     Then 
for  twenty  years  he  poured  forth  his  message.     Never  did  a 
man  cany  such  a  pair  of  eyes  into  the  great  world  of  London 
or  set  a  more  peremptory  mark  upon  its  notabilities.     His 
best   work   was   done    before    1851.     His   later   years   were] 
darkened  with  much  misery  of  body.     No  one  can  allege  that 
he  ever  had  a  happy  mind. 


VI.]  THE  ENGLISH-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  229 

He  was  a  true  prophet,  but,  Elijah-like,  he  seemed  to  him- 
self to  be  alone.     His  derision  of  the  current  religion  seems 
sometimes  needless.     Yet  even  that  has  the  grand  note  of/ 
sincerity.     What  he  desired  he  in  no  small  measure  achieved 
— that  his  readers  should  be  arrested  and  feel  themselves  face 
to  face  with  reality.     His  startling  intuition,  his  intellectual 
uprightness,  his  grasp  upon  things  as  they  are,  his  passion  for 
what  ought  to  be,  made  a  great  impression  upon  his  age. 
It  was  in  itself  a  religious  influence.     Here  was  a  mind  ol' 
giant    force,    of   sternest    truthfulness.     His    untruths    were' 
those  of  exaggeration.     His  injustices  were  those  of  prejudice. 
He  invested  many  questions  of  a  social  and  moral,  of  a  political 
and  religious  sort  with  a  nobler  meaning  than  they  had  had 
before.     His  French  Revolution,  his  papers  on  Chartism,  his^l 
unceasing  comment  on  the  troubled  life  of  the  years  from  V 
1830  to  1865,  are  of  highest  moment  for  our  understanding 
of  the  growth  of  that  social  feeling  in  the  midst  of  which  we 
live  and  work.     In  his  brooding  sympathy  with  the  down- 
trodden he  was  a  great  inaugurator  of  the  social  movement. 
He  felt  the  curse  of  an  aristocratic  society,  yet  no  one  hat^ 
told  us  with  more  drastic  truthfulness  the  evils  of  our  demo- 
cratic  institutions.     His   word   was   a   great   corrective   for 
much   '  rose-water  *   optimism  which  prevailed  in  his  day. 
The  note  of  hope  is,  however,  often  lacking.     The  mythology 
of  an  absentee  God  had  faded  from  him.     Yet  the  God  who 
was  clear  to  his  mature  consciousness,  clear  as  the  sun  in  the"' 
heavens,  was  a  God  over  the  world,  to  judge  it  inexorably,  i 
Again,  it  is  not  difficult  to  accumulate  evidence  in  his  words 
which  looks  toward  pantheism ;  but  what  one  may  call  the 
religious  benefit  of  pantheism,  the  sense  that  God  is  in  his 
world,  Carlyle  often  loses. 

Materialism  is  to-day  so  deeply  discredited  that  we  find  it^ 
difficult  to  realise  that  sixty  years  ago  the  problem  wore  a 
different  look.  Carlyle  was  never  weary  of  pouring  out  the 
vials  of  his  contempt  on  '  mud-philosophies  '  and  exalting' 
the  spirit  as  against  matter.  Never  was  a  man  more  opposed 
to  the  idea  of  a  godless  world,  in  which  man  is  his  own  chief 
end  and  his  sensual  pleasures  the  main  aims  of  his  existence. 


230    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

His  insight  into  the  consequences  of  our  commerciaHsm  and 
luxury  and  absorption  in  the  outward  never  fails.  Man  is^ 
God's  son,  but  the  effort  to  reaUse  that  sonship  in  the  joy  and 
trust  of  a  devout  heart  and  in  the  humble  round  of  daily  life 
sometimes  seems  to  him  cant  or  superstition.  The  humble 
life  of  godliness  made  an  unspeakable  appeal  to  him.  He 
had  known  those  who  Uved  that  life.  His  love  for  them  was 
imperishable.  Yet  he  had  so  recoiled  from  the  superstitions 
and  hjrpocrisies  of  others,  the  Eternal  in  his  majesty  was  so 
ineffable,  all  effort  to  approach  him  so  unworthy,  that  almost 
instinctively  he  would  call  upon  the  man  who  made  the  effort^^ 
to  desist.  So  magnificent,  all  his  life  long,  had  been  his 
protest  against  the  credulity  and  stupidity  of  men,  against  \^ 
beliefs  which  assert  the  impossible  and  blink  the  facts,  that, 
for  himself,  the  great  objects  of  faith  were  held  fast  to,  so  to 
say,  in  their  naked  verity,  with  a  giant's  strength.  They  were 
half- querulously  denied  all  garment  and  embodiment,  lest 
he  also  should  be  found  credulous  and  self-deceived.  From 
this  titan  labouring  at  the  foundations  of  the  world,  this 
Samson  pulling  down  temples  of  the  Philistines  on  his  head, 
this  Cyclops  heaving  hills  at  ships  as  they  pass  by,  it  seems 
a  long  way  to  Emerson.     Yet  Emerson  was  Carlyle's  friend. 

Emerson 

Arnold  said  in  one  of  his  American  addresses  :    '  Besides 
these  voices — Newman,  Carlyle,  Goethe — there  came  to  us 
in  the  Oxford  of  my  youth  a  voice  also  from  this  side  of  the 
Atlantic,  a  clear  and  pure  voice  which,  for  my  ear  at  any  rate, 
brought  a  strain  as  new  and  moving  and  unforgetable  as  those 
others.      Lowell  has  described  the  apparition  of  Emerson 
to  your  young  generation  here.     He  was  your  Newman,  your 
man  of  soul  and  genius,  speaking  to  your  bodily  ears,  a  present 
object  for  your  heart  and  imagination.'     Then  he  quotes  as 
one   of  the   most  memorable  passages   in   English   speech  :   . 
'  Trust  thyself.     Accept  the  place  which  the  divine  providence  1 
has  found  for  you,  the  society  of  your  contemporaries,  the   ] 
connection   of   events.     Great   men   have   always   done   so, 


VI.]  THE  ENGLISH-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  231 

confiding  themselves  childlike  to  the  genius  of  their  age, 
betraying  a  perception  which  was  stirring  in  their  hearts, 
working  through  their  hands,  dominating  their  whole  being.' 
Arnold  speaks  of  Carlyle's  grim  insistence  upon  labour  and 
righteousness  but  of  his  scorn  of  happiness,  and  then  says  : 
*  But  Emerson  taught  happiness  in  labour,  in  righteousness 
and  veracity.  In  all  the  life  of  the  spirit,  happiness  and 
eternal  hope,  that  was  Emerson's  gospel.  By  his  conviction 
that  in  the  life  of  the  spirit  is  happiness,  by  his  hope  and 
expectation  that  this  life  of  the  spirit  will  more  and  more 
be  understood  and  will  prevail,  by  this  Emerson  was  great.' 

Seven  of  Emerson's  ancestors  were  ministers  of  Newi 
England  churches.  He  inherited  qualities  of  self-reliance,  y 
love  of  liberty,  strenuous  virtue,  sincerity,  sobriety  and  fear- 
less loyalty  to  ideals.  The  form  of  his  ideals  was  modified 
by  the  glow  of  transcendentalism  which  passed  over  parts 
of  New  England  in  the  second  quarter  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  but  the  spirit  in  which  Emerson  conceived  the  laws 
of  life,  reverenced  them  and  lived  them,  was  the  Puritan 
spirit,  only  elevated,  enlarged  and  beautified  by  the  poetic 
temperament.  Taking  his  degree  from  Harvard  in  1821,/ 
despising  school  teaching,  stirred  by  the  passion  for  spiritual 
leadership,  the  ministry  seemed  to  offer  the  fairest  field  for 
its  satisfaction.  In  1825  he  entered  the  Divinity  School  in 
Harvard  to  prepare  himself  for  the  Unitarian  ministry.  In 
1829  he  became  associate  minister  of  the  Second  Unitarian 
Church  in  Boston.  He  arrived  at  the  conviction  that  the 
Lord's  Supper  was  not  intended  by  Jesus  to  be  a  permanent  1 
sacrament.  He  found  his  congregation,  not  unnaturally,  \ 
reluctant  to  agree  with  him.  He  therefore  retired  from 
the  pastoral  office.  He  was  always  a  preacher,  though  of  a 
singular  order.  His  task  was  to  befriend  and  guide  the  inner 
life  of  man.  The  influences  of  this  period  in  his  life  have  been 
enumerated  as  the  liberating  philosophy  of  Coleridge,  thel 
mystical  vision  of  Swedenborg,  the  intimate  poetry  of  Words- ' 
worth,  the  stimulating  essays  of  Carlyle.  His  address  before 
the  graduating  class  of  the  Divinity  School  at  Cambridge  in 
1838  was  an  impassioned  protest  against  what  he  called  the 


232    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

defects  of  historical  Christianity,  its  undue  rehance  upon  the  j 
personal  authority  of  Jesus,  its  failure  to  explore  the  moral 
nature  of  man.     He  made  a  daring  plea  for  absolute  self-^ 
reliance  and  new  inspiration  in  religion  :    '  In  the  soul  let 
redemption  be  sought.     Refuse  the  good  models,  even  those 
which  are  sacred  in  the  imagination  of  men.     Cast  conformity  / 
behind  you.     Acquaint  men  at  first  hand  with  deity.'     He 
never  could  have  been  the  power  he  was  by  the  force  of  his_ 
negations.     His  power  lay  in    the  wealth,  the  variety,  the  1 
beauty  and  insight  with  which  he  set  forth  the  positive  side   ' 
of  his  doctrine  of  the  greatness  of  man,  of  the  presence  of 
God  in  man,  of  the  divineness  of  life,  of  God's  judgment  and 
mercy  in  the  order  of  the  world.     One  sees  both  the  power  ; 
and  the  limitation  of  Emerson's  religious  teaching.     At  the' 
root  of  it  lay  a  real  philosophy.     He  could  not  philosophise. 
He  was  always  passing  from  the  principle  to  its  application. 
He  could  not  systematise.     He  speaks   of   his  '  formidable  ] 
tendency  to  the  lapidary  style.'     Granting  that  one  finds  his 
philosophy  in  fragments,  just  as  one  finds  his  interpretation 
of  religion  in  flashes  of  marvellous  insight,  both  are  worth] 
searching   for,  and   either,   in  Coleridge's  phrase,  finds   us, 
whether  we  search  for  it  or  not. 


Arnold 

What  shall  we  say  of  Matthew  Arnold  himself  ?     Without 
doubt  the  twenty  years  by  which  Arnold  was  Newman's  » 
junior  at  Oxford  made  a  great  difference  in  the  intellectual 
atmosphere  of  that  place,  and  of  the  English  world  of  letters, 
at  the  time  when  Arnold's  mind  was  maturing.     He  was  not 
too  late  to  feel  the  spell  of  Newman.     His  mind  was  hardly  | 
one  to  appreciate  the  whole  force  of  that  spell.     He  was  at 
Oxford  too   early  for  the  full  understanding  of  the  limits 
within  which  alone  the  scientific  conception  of  the  world  can 
be  said  to  be  true.     Arnold  often  boasted  that  he  was  no 
met^aphysician.     He  really  need  never  have  mentioned  the"^ 
fact.     The  assumption  that  whatever  is  true  can  be  verified 
in  the  sense  of  the  precise  kind  of  verification  which  science 


VI.]  THE  ENGLISH-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  233 

implies  is  a  very  serious  mistake.  Yet  his  whole  intellectual 
strength  was  devoted  to  the  sustaining,  one  cannot  say 
exactly  the  cause  of  religion,  but  certainly  that  of  noble 
conduct,  and  to  the  assertion  of  the  elation  of  duty  and  the 
joy  of  righteousness.  With  all  the  scorn  that  Arnold  pours 
upon  the  trust  which  we  place  in  God's  love,  he  yet  holds  ! 
to  the  conviction  that  *  the  power  without  ourselves  which } 
makes  for  righteousness*  is  one  upon  which  we  may  in 
rapture  rely. 

Arnold  had  convinced  himself  that  in  an  age  such  as  ours, 
which  will  take  nothing  for  granted,  but  must  verify  every-  I 
thing,  Christianity,  in  the  old  form  of  authoritative  beUef  in  | 
supernatural  beings  and  miraculous  events,  is  no  longer  tenable. 
We  must  confine  ourselves  to  such  ethical  truths  as  can  be/ 
verified  by  experience.     We  must  reject  everything  which[ 
goes  beyond  these.     Religion  has  no  more  to  do  with  super- 
natural doQjma  than  with  metaphysical  philosophy.     It  has 
nothing  to  do  with  either.     It  has  to  do  with  conduct.     It  is  I 
folly  CO  make  religion  depend  upon  the  conviction  of  the  exis- 
tence of  an  intelligent  and  moral  governor  of  the  universe, 
as  the  theologians  have  done.     For  the  object  of  faith  in  the 
ethical  sense  .Vmold  coined  the  phrase  :    '  The  Eternal  not 
ourselves  whic  i  makes  for  righteousness.'     So  soon  as  we  go 
beyond  this,  we  enter  upon  the  region  of  fanciful  anthropo- 
morphism, of  extra  belief,  aberglauhe,  which  always  revenges 
itself.     These  are  the  main  contentions  of  his  book,  Literature 
,  and  Dogma,  1875. 

One  feels  the  value  of  Arnold's  recall  to  the  sense  of  the 
literary  character  of  the  Scriptural  documents,  as  urged  in  his 
book.  Saint  Paul  and  Protestantism,  1870,  and  again  to  the 
sense  of  the  influence  which  the  imagination  of  mankind  has 
had  upon  religion.     One  feels  the  truth  of  his  assertion  of  our 
ignorance.     One  feels  Arnold's  own  deep  earnestness.     It  was 
his  concern  that  reason  and  the  will  of  God  should  prevail^ 
Though  he  was  primarily  a  literary  man,  yet  his  great  interestr\ 
was  in  religion.    One  feels  so  sincerely  that  his  main  conclusion  ; 
is  sound,  that  it  is  the  more  trying  that  his  statement  of  it  ' 
should  be  often  so  perverse  and  his  method  of  sustaining  it 


234    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

so  precarious.     It  is  quite  certain  that  the  idea  of  the  Eternal 
not  ourselves  which   makes    for   righteousness  is    far    fromj 
being  the  clear  idea  which  Arnold  claims.     It  is  far  from 
being  an  idea  derived  from  experience  or  verifiable  in  ex-  \ 
perience,  in  the  sense  which  he  asserts.     It  seems  positively  ' 
incredible  that  Arnold  did  not  know  that  with  this  conception 
he  passed  the  boundary  of  the  realm  of  science  and  entered 
the  realm  of  metaphysics,  which  he  so  abhorred. 

He  was  the  eldest  son  of  Thomas  Arnold  of  Rugby.     He 
was  educated  at  Winchester  and  Rugby  and  at  Balliol  College.  ] 
He  was  Professor  of  Poetry  in  Oxford  from  1857  to  1867.    Hey 
was  an  inspector  of  schools.     The  years  of  his  best  literary 
labour  were  much  taken  up  in  ways  which  were  wasteful  of_ 
his  rare  powers.     He  came  by  literary  intuition  to  an  idea  of  \ 
Scripture  which  others  had  built  up  from  the  point  of  view 
of  a  theory  of  knowledge  and  by  investigation  of  the  facts. 
He  is  the  helpless  personification  of  a  view  of  the  relation  of 
science  and  religion  which  has  absolutely  passed  away.     Yel^ 
Arnold  died  only  in  1888.     How  much  a  distinguished  in- 
heritance may  mean  is  gathered  from  the  fact  that  a  grand- 
daughter of  Thomas  Arnold  and  niece  of  Matthew  Arnold,  ] 
Mrs.  Humphry  Ward,  in  her  novels,  has  dealt  largely  with 
problems  of  religious  life,  and  more  particularly  of  religious 
though tfulness.     She  has  done   for    her  generation,   in  her 
measure,  that  which  George  Ehot  did  for  hers. 


Martineau 

As  the  chapter  and  the  book  draw  to  their  close  we  can 
think  of  no  man  whose  life  more  nearly  spanned  the  century, 
or  whose  work  touched  more  fruitfully  almost  every  aspect  of 
Christian  thoughtfulness  than  did  that  of  James  Martineau. 
W^e  can  think  of  no  man  who  gathered  into  himself  more  fully 
the  significant  theological  tendencies  of  the  age,  or  whose 
utterance  entitles  him  to  be  listened  to  more  reverently  as 
seer  and  saint.     He  was  born  in  1805.     He  was  bred  as  an 


engineer.     He  fulfilled  for  years  the  calling  of  minister  and 
preacher.      He  gradually  exchanged   this   for    the   activity 


VI.]  THE  ENGLISH-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  235 

of   a  professor.     He  was  a  religious  philosopher  in  the  oldf  "j 
sense,  but  he  was  also  a  critic  and  historian.     His  positioq 
with  reference  to  the  New  Testament  was  partly  antiquated 
before  his  Seat  of  Authority  in  Religion,  1890,  made  its  appear- 
ance.    Evolutionism  never  became  with  him  a  coherent  and] 
consistent  assumption.    Ethics  never  altogether  got  rid  of  thg  | 
innate  ideas.     The    social    movement   left   him  almost    un-l 
touched.    Yet,  despite  all  this,  he  was  in  some  sense  a  repre- 
sentative progressive  theologian  of  the  century. 

There  is  a  parallel  between  Newman  and  Martineau.     Both  | 
busied  themselves  with  the  problem  of  authority.     Criticism 
had  been  fatal  to  the  apprehension  which  both  had  inherited 
concerning  the  authority  of  Scripture.     From  that  point  on- 
ward  they  took   divergent  courses.     The  arguments  which 
touched  the  infallible  and  oracular  authority  of  Scripture,  for 
Newman  established  that  of  the  Church ;  for  Martineau  they"! 
had  destroyed  that  of  the  Church  four  hundred  years  ago.  ' 
Martineau's  sense,  even  of  the  authority  of  Jesus,  reverent  , 
as  it  is,  is  yet  no  pietistic  and  mystical  view.     The  authority  / 
of  Jesus  is  that  of  the  truth  which  he  speaks,  of  the  good-  f 
ness  which    dwells  in  him,   of  God  himself  and  God   alone,  i 
A  real  interest  in  the  sciences  and  true  learning  in  some  of; 
them  made  Martineau  able  to  write  that  wonderful  chap  ten 
in  his  Seat  of  Authority,  which  he  entitled  '  God  in  Nature.'/ 
Newman  could  see  in  nature,  at  most  a  sacramental  sugges- 
tion, a  symbol  of  transcendental  truth. 

The  Martineaus  came  of  old  Huguenot  stock,   which  in 
England  belonged  to  the  liberal  Presbyterianism  out  of  which 
much  of  British  Unitarianism  came.     The  righteousness  of 
a  persecuted  race  had   left  an  austere  impress  upon  their 
domestic  and  social   life.     Intellectually  they  inherited    the/ 
advanced  liberalism  of  their  day.     Harriet  Martineau's  earlier! 
piety  had  been  of  the  most  fervent  sort.     She  reacted  vio- 
lently against  it  in  later  years.     She  had  httle  of  the  poetic) 
temper  and  gentleness  of   her  brother.      She  described  one"^ 
of  her  own  later  works  as  the  last  word  of  philosophic  atheism. 
James  was,  and   always  remained,  of  deepest  sensitiveness  , 
and  reverence  and  of  a  gentleness  which  stood  in  high  con-  j 


236    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

trast  with  his  powers  of  conflict,  if  necessity  arose.  Out  of 
Martineau's  years  as  preacher  in  Liverpool  and  London  came 
two  books  of  rare  devotional  quality,  Endeavours  after  the 
Christian  Life,  1843  and  1847,  and  Hours  of  Thought  on  Sacred 
Things,  1873  and  1879.  Almost  all  his  life  he  was  identified 
with  Manchester  College,  as  a  student  when  the  college  was 
located  at  York,  as  a  teacher  when  it  returned  to  Man- 
chester and  again  when  it  was  removed  to  London.  With  its 
removal  to  Oxford,  accomplished  in  1889,  he  had  not  fully 
sympathised.  He  believed  that  the  university  itself  must  some 
day  do  justice  to  the  education  of  men  for  the  ministry  in  other 
churches  than  the  Anglican.  He  was  eighty  years  old  when 
he  published  his  Types  of  Ethical  Theory,  eighty-tw^o  when 
he  gave  to  the  world  his  Study  of  Religion,  eighty-five  when 
his  Seat  of  Authority  saw  the  light.  The  effect  of  this  post- 
ponement of  publication  was  not  wholly  good.  The  books, 
represented  marvellous  learning  and  ripeness  of  reflection.  I 
But  they  belong  to  a  period  anterior  to  the  dates  they' 
bear  upon  their  title-pages.  Martineau's  education  and 
his  early  professional  experience  put  him  in  touch  with  the 
advancing  sciences.  In  the  days  when  most  men  of  pro- 
gressive spirit  were  carried  off  their  feet,  when  materialism 
was  flaunted  in  men's  faces  and  the  defence  of  religion  was 
largely  in  the  hands  of  those  who  knew  nothing  of  the  sciences, 
Martineau  was  not  moved.  He  saw  the  end  from  the  begin- 
ning. There  is  nothing  finer  in  his  latest  work  than  his  early 
essays — '  Nature  and  God,'  '  Science,  Nescience  and  Faith,' 
and  '  Religion  as  affected  by  Modern  Materialism.'  He  died 
in  1900  in  his  ninety-fifth  year. 

It  is  difficult  to  speak  of  the  living  in  these  pages.  Personal 
relations  enforce  reserve  and  brevity.  Nevertheless,  no  one 
can  think  of  Manchester  College  and  Martineau  without  being 
reminded  of  Mansfield  College  and  of  Fairbairn,  a  Scotchman, 
but  of  the  Independent  Church.  He  also  was  both  teacher 
and  preacher  all  his  days,  leader  of  the  movement  which 
brought  Mansfield  College  from  Birmingham  to  Oxford,  by 
the  confession  both  of  Anglicans  and  of  Non-conformists 
the  most  learned  man  in  his  subjects  in  the  Oxford  of  his 


VI.]  THE  ENGLISH-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  237 

time,  an  historian,  touched  by  the  social  enthusiasm,  but  a 
rehgious  philosopher,  par  excellence.  His  Religion  and  Modern 
Life,  1894,  his  Catholicism,  Roman  and  Anglican,  1899,  his 
Place  of  Christ  in  Modern  Theology,  1893,  his  Philosophy  of 
the  Christian  Religion,  1902,  and  his  Studies  in  Religion  and 
Theology,  1910,  indicate  the  wideness  of  his  sympathies  and 
the  scope  of  the  application  of  his  powers.  If  imitation 
is  homage,  grateful  acknowledgment  is  here  made  of  rich 
spoil  taken  from  his  books. 

Philosophy  took   a  new  turn   in  Britain  after  the  middle 
of  the  decade  of  the  sixties.     It  began  to  be  conceded  that 
Locke  and  Hume  were  dead.     Had  Mill  really  appreciated 
that  fact  he  might  have  been  a  philosopher  more  fruitful  and 
influential  than  he  was.     Sir  William  Hamilton  was  dead.i 
Mansel's  endeavour,  out  of  agnosticism  to  conjure  the  most 
absurdly  positivistic  faith,  had  left  thinking  men  more  ex- 
posed to  scepticism,  if  possible,  than  they  had  been  before. 
When  Hegel  was  thought  in  Germany  to  be  obsolete,  and  < 
everywhere  the  cry  was  '  back  to  Kant,'  some  Scotch  and  I 
English  scholars,  the  two  Cairds  and  Seth  Pringle-Pattison,! 
with    Thomas   Hill    Green,    made   a   modified    Hegehanismj 
current  in  Great  Britain.     They   led   by   this   path   in   the 
mtroduction  of  their  countrymen  to  later  German  ideahsm. 
By  this  introduction  philosophy  in  both  Britain  and  America  |  i 
has  greatly  gained.     Despite  these  facts,  John  Caird's  Intro^ 
duction  to  the  Philosophy  of  Religion,  1880,  is   still  only  a  ' 
religious   philosophy.     It   is   not    a   philosophy   of   religion. 
His  Fundamental  Ideas  of  Christianity,  1896,  hardly  escapes 
the  old  antitheses  among  which  theological  discussion  moved, 
say,  thirty  years  ago.     Edward  Caird's  Critical  Philosophy  of  t 
Kant,  1889,  and  especially  his  Evolution  of  Religion,   1892,/ 
marked  the  coming  change  more  definitely  than  did  any  of 
the  labours  of  his  brother.     Thomas  Hill  Green  gave  great 
promise  in  his  Introduction  to  Hume,  1885,  his  Prolegomend  | 
to  Ethics,  1883,  and  still  more  in  essays  and  papers  scattered 
through    the    volumes   edited   by   Nettleship    after    Green's    / 
death.     His  contribution   to   religious   discussion    was    such 
as  to  make  his  untimely  end  to  be  deeply  deplored.     Seth 


238    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [ch. 

Pringle-Pattison's  early  work,  The  Development  from  Kant  to 
Hegel,  1881,  still  has  great  worth.  His  Hegelianism  and 
Personality,  1893,  deals  with  one  aspect  of  the  topic  which 
needs  ever  again  to  be  explored,  because  of  the  psychological 
basis  which  in  religious  discussion  is  now  assumed. 


James 

The  greatest  contribution  of  America  to  religious  discussion 
in  recent  years  is  surely  William  James's  Varieties  of  Religious^ 
Experience,  1902.    The  book  is  unreservedly  acknowledged  in 
Britain,  and  in  Germany  as  well,  to  be  the  best  which  we 
yet  have  upon  the  psychology  of  religion.     Not  only  so,  it) 
gives  a  new  intimation  as  to  what  psychology  of  religion 
means.     It  blazes  a  path  along  which  investigators  are  eagerly 
following.     Royce,  in  his  Phi  Beta  Kappa  address  at  Harvard 
in  1911,  declared  James  to  be  the  third  representative  philo^ 
sopher  whom  America  has  produced.     He  had  the  form  of 
philosophy  as  Emerson  never  had.     He  could  realise  whither 
he  was  going,  as  Emerson  in  his  intuitiveness  never  did.     He 
criticised  the  dominant  monism  in  most  pregnant  way.     He^ 
recurred  to  the  problems  which  dualism  owned  but  could 
not  solve.     We  cannot  call  the  new  scheme  dualism.     The 
world  does  not  go  back.     Yet  James  made  an  over-confident 
generation  feel    that  the    centuries  to  which  dualism  had 
seemed  reasonable  were  not  so  completely  without  intelligence 
as  has  been  supposed  by  some.     No  philosophy  may  claim^ 
completeness  as  an  interpretation  of  the  universe.     No  more 
conclusive  proof  of  this  judgment  could  be  asked  than  is  given 
quite  unintentionally  in  Haeckel's  Weltrdthsel. 

At  no  point  is  this  recall  more  earnest  than  in  James's 
dealing  with  the  antithesis  of  good  and  evil.  The  reaction 
of  the  mind  of  the  race,  and  primarily  of  individuals,  upon 
the  fact  of  evil,  men's  consciousness  of  evil  in  themselves, 
their  desire  to  be  rid  of  it,  their  belief  that  there  is  a  deliver- 
ance from  it  and  that  they  have  found  that  deliverance,  is 
for  James  the  point  of  departure  for  the  study  of  the  actual 
phenomena  and  the  active  principle  of  religion.     The  truest 


VI.]  THE  ENGLISH-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  239 

psychological  and  philosophical  instinct  of  the  age  thus  sets 
the  experience  of  conversion  in  the  centre  of  discussion. 
Apparently  most  men  have,  at  some  time  and  in  some  way, 
the  consciousness  of  a  capacity  for  God  which  is  unfulfilled, 
of  a  relation  to  God  unrealised,  which  is  broken  and  resumed, 
or  yet  to  be  resumed.  They  have  the  sense  that  their  own  ' 
effort  must  contribute  to  this  recovery.  They  have  the  sense 
also  that  something  without  themselves  empowers  them  to 
attempt  this  recovery  and  to  persevere  in  the  attempt. 
The  psychology  of  religion  is  thus  put  in  the  forefront.  The 
vast  masses  of  material  of  this  sort  which  the  religious  world, 
both  past  and  present,  possesses,  have  been  either  actually 
unexplored,  or  else  set  forth  in  ways  which  distorted  and 
obscured  the  facts.  The  experience  is  the  fact.  The  best 
science  the  world  knows  is  now  to  deal  with  it  as  it  would 
deal  with  any  other  fact.  This  is  the  epoch-making  thing, 
the  contribution  to  method  in  James's  book.  James  was  , 
bom  in  New  York  in  1842,  the  son  of  a  Swedenborgian  theo-  I 
logian.  He  took  his  medical  degree  at  Harvard  in  1870. 
He  began  to  lecture  there  in  anatomy  in  1872  and  became 
Professor  of  Philosophy  in  1885.  He  was  a  Gifford  and  a 
Hibbert  Lecturer.     He  died  in  1910. 

When  James's  thesis  shall  have  been  fully  worked  out, 
much  supposed  investigation  of  primitive  religions,  which  is\ 
really  nothing  but  imagination  concerning  primitive  rehgions,! 
will  be  shown  in  its  true  worthlessness.  We  know  very/ 
little  about  primitive  man.  What  we  learn  as  to  primitive 
man,  on  the  side  of  his  religion,  we  must  learn  in  part  from 
the  psychology  of  the  matured  and  civilised,  the  present 
living,  thinking,  feeling  man  in  contact  with  his  religion^] 
Matured  religion  is  not  to  be  Judged  by  the  primitive,  but 
the  reverse.  The  real  study  of  the  history  of  rehgions,  the 
study  of  the  objective  phenomena,  from  earliest  to  latest 
times,  has  its  place.  But  the  history  of  religions  is  per- 
verted when  it  takes  for  fact  in  the  life  of  primitive  man 
that  which  never  existed  save  in  the  imagination  of  twen- 
tieth century  students.  Early  Christianity,  on  its  inner  and 
spiritual  side,  is  to  be  judged  by  later  Christianity,  by  present 


240    HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT    [oh. 

Christianity,  by  the  Christian  experience  which  we  see  and 
know  to-day,  and  not  conversely,  as  men  have  always  claimed. 
The  modern  man  is  not  to  be  converted  after  the  pattern 
which  it  is  alleged  that  his  grandfather  followed.  For,  first, 
there  is  the  question  as  to  whether  his  grandfather  did  con- 
form to  this  pattern.  And  beyond  that,  it  is  safer  to  try  to 
understand  the  experience  of  the  grandfather,  whom  we  do 
not  know,  by  the  psychology  and  experience  of  the  grandson, 
whom  we  do  know,  with,  of  course,  a  judicious  admixture  of 
knowledge  of  the  history  of  the  nineteenth  century,  which 
would  occasion  characteristic  differences.  The  modem  saint 
is  not  asked  to  be  a  saint  like  Francis.  In  the  first  place,  how 
do  we  know  what  Francis  was  like  ?  In  the  second  place,  the 
experience  of  Francis  may  be  most  easily  understood  by  the 
aid  of  modern  experience  of  true  revolt  from  worldliness  and 
of  consecration  to  self-sacrifice,  as  these  exist  among  us, 
with,  of  course,  the  proper  background  furnished  by  the 
history  of  the  thirteenth  century.  Souls  are  one.  Our  souls 
may  be,  at  least  in  some  measure,  known  to  ourselves.  Even 
the  souls  of  some  of  our  fellows  may  be  measurably  known 
to  us.  What  are  the  facts  of  the  religious  experience  ? 
How  do  souls  react  in  face  of  the  eternal  ?  The  experience 
of  religion,  the  experience  of  the  fatherhood  of  God,  of 
the  sonship  of  man,  of  the  moving  of  the  spirit,  is  surely, 
one  experience.  How  did  even  Christ's  great  soul  react,j 
experience,  work,  will,  and  suffer  ?  By  what  possible  means  | 
can  we  ever  know  how  he  reacted,  worked,  willed,  suffered  V 
In  the  literature  we  learn  only  how  men  thought  that/ 
he  reacted.  We  must  inquire  of  our  own  souls.  To  be 
sure,  Christ  belonged  to  the  first  century,  and  we  live 
in  the  twentieth.  It  is  possible  for  us  to  learn  something 
of  the  first  century  and  of  the  concrete  outward  conditions 
which  caused  his  life  to  take  the  shape  which  it  did.  '  We 
learn  this  by  strict  historical  research.  Assuredly  the 
supreme  measure  in  which  the  spirit  of  all  truth  and  good- 
ness once  took  possession  of  the  Nazarene,  remains  to  us 
a  mystery  unfathomed  and  unfathomable.  Dwelling  iq  , 
Jesus,   that  spirit  made  through  him   a  revelation  of  the   / 


VI.]  THE  ENGLISH-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  241 

divine  such  as  the  world  has  never  seen.  Yet  that  mystery 
leads  forth  along  the  path  of  that  which  is  intelligible.  And, 
in  another  sense,  even  such  religious  experience  as  we  our- 
selves may  have,  poor  though  it  be  and  sadly  limited,  leads 
back  into  the  same  mystery. 

It  was  with  this  contention  that  religion  is  a  fact  of  the 
inner  life  of  man,  that  it  is  to  be  understood  through  conscious- 
ness, that  it  is  essentially  and  absolutely  reasonable  and  yet 
belongs  to  the  transcendental  world,  it  was  with  this  con- 
tention that,  in  the  person  of  Immanuel  Kant,  the  history 
of  modem  religious  thought  began.  It  is  with  this  contention, 
in  one  of  its  newest  and  most  far-reaching  applications  in 
the  work  of  William  James,  that  this  history  continues.  For 
no  one  can  think  of  the  number  of  questions  which  recent 
years  have  raised,  without  realising  that  this  history  is  by 
no  means  concluded.  It  is  conceivable  that  the  changes 
which  the  twentieth  century  will  bring  may  be  as  noteworthy 
as  those  which  the  nineteenth  century  has  seen.  At  least 
we  may  be  grateful  that  so  great  and  sure  a  foundation  has 
been  laid. 


BIBLIOGEAPHY 


CHAPTER  I 

Wernle,  Paul.     Einfuhrung  in  das  theologische  Studium.     Tubingen, 

2.  Aufl.,  1911. 
Die  Kdltur  der  Geqenwjlrt.     Th.  I.,  Abth.  iv.  1.     Geschichte  der 

Christlichen  Religion,   v.   Wellhausen,  Jiilicher,  Harnack  u.    A., 

2.  Aufl.     Berlin,  1909. 
Die  Kultur  der  Geqexwart.     Th.   I.,  Abth.  iy.  2.     Systematische 

Christliche    Religion,   v.    Troeltsch,  Herrmann,  Holtzmann  u.  A., 

2.  Aufl.     Berlin,  1909. 
Pfleiderer,  Otto.     The  Development  of  Theology  in  Germany  since 

Kant,  and  its  Progress  in  Great  Britain  since  1825.     Transl.,  J. 

Frederick  Smith.     London,  1893. 
LicHTENBERGER,  F.     Histoire  des  Idees  Religieuses  en  AUemagne  depuis 

le  milieu  du  XVIII'  siecle   a  nos  jours.     Paris,  1873.     Transl,, 

with  notes,  W.  Hastie.     Edinburgh,  1889. 
Adeney,  W.  F.     a  Century  of  Progress  in  Religious  Life  and  Thought. 

London,  1901. 
Harnack,    Adolf.     Das    Wesen   des   Christenthums.      Berlin,  1900. 

Transl.,  What  is  Christianity?   T.  B.  Saunders.     London,  1901. 
Stephen,    Leslie.     History   of  English   Thought   in  the  Eighteenth 

Century.     2  vols.     London,  3rd  ed.,  1902. 
Troeltsch,  Ernst.     Art.  'Deismus'  in  Herzog-Hauck,  Realencyclopddie 

fur  Protestantische  Theologie  und  Kirche.    3.  Aufl.    Leipzig,  4.  Bd., 

1898,   s.  532   f.  :  art.   'Aufklarung,'  2.  Bd.,  1897,  s.  225  f.  :    art. 

'Idealismus,  deutscher,'  8.  Bd.,  1900,  s.  612  f. 
MiRBT,  Carl.    Art.  'Pietismus'  in  Herzog-Hauck,  Realencyclopddie^  15. 

Bd.,  1904,  s.  774  f. 
RiTSCHL,  Albrecht.     Ocschichte  des  Pietismus,  3  Bde.    Bonn,  1880- 

1886. 


CHAPTER  II 

WiNDELBAND,  W.  Die  Geschichte  der  neueren  Philosophie  in  ihrem 
Zusammenhang  mit  der  allgemeinen  Kultur  und  den  besondereii 
Wissensrhaften.     2  Bde.     Leipzig,  1899. 

HoFFDiNG,  Harold.  Geschichte  der  neueren  Philosophie.  Uebersetzt 
V.  Bendixen,     2  Bde.     Leipzig,  1896. 


244        HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT 

EucKEN,  Rudolf.     Die  Lehensanschauungen  der  grossen  Denker.     8. 

Aufl.   Leipzig,  1909.    Transl,  The  Problem  of  Human  Life  as  viewed 

by  the  Great  Thinkers,  by  W.  S.  Hough  and  W.  R.  Boyce  Gibson. 

New  York,  1910. 
Pringle-Pattison,  a.  Seth.     The  Development  from  Kant  to  Hegel. 

London,  1881. 
Drews,  Arthur.    Die  Deutsche  Spekulation  seit  Kant.    2  Bde.    Berlin, 

1893. 
RoTCE,  JosiAH.     The  Spirit   of  Modern   Philosophy.     Boston,  1893. 

The  Religious  Aspect  of  Philosophy.     Boston,  1885.     The  World 

and  the  Individual.     2  vols.     New  York,  1901  and  1904. 
Paulsen,  Friedrich.     Immanuel   Kant,  sein  Lebtn  und  seine  Lehre. 

Stuttgart,  3.  Aufl.,  1899.    Transl,  Creiqhton  and  Lefever.    New 

York,  1902. 
Caird,  Edward,    A  Critical  Account  of  the  Philosophy  of  Kant :  with 

an  Historical  Introduction.     Glasgow,  1877. 
Fischer,  Kuno.     Hegels  Leben,   Werke  und  Lehre.      2  Bde.     Heidel- 
berg, 1901. 
Siebeck,   Hermann.     Lehrbuch  der  Religionsphilosophie.     Freiburg, 

1893. 
EucKEN,  Rudolf.    Der  Wahrheitsgehalt  der  Religion.    Leipzig,  4.  Aufl., 

1906.     Transl.,  Jones.     London,  1911. 
TiELE,   C.   P.      Compendium  der  Religionsgeschichte.     Uebersetzt  v. 

Weber.     3.  Aufl.  umgearbeitet  v.  Soderblom.    Breslau,  1903. 


CHAPTER  III 

Von  Frank,  H.  R.     Geschichte  und  Kritik  der  neueren  Theologie  ins- 

besondere  der  systematischen  seit  Schleiermacher.     Hrsg.  v.  Schaar- 

schmidt.     Erlangen,  1898. 
Schwarz,    Carl.    Zur  Geschichte  der  neutten  Theologie.    Leipzig,  4. 

Aufl.,  1869. 
Kattenbusch,  Ferdinand.     Von  Schleiermacher  zu  Ritschl.     Giessen, 

1892. 
Brown,  William  Adams.     The  Essence  of  Christianity :  a  Study  in  the 

History  of  Definition.     New  York,  1902. 
Dilthey,  Wilhelm.     Leben  Schleiermachers,  1.  Bd.     Berlin,  1870. 
Gass,  Wilhelm.      Geschichte  der  Protestantischen  Dogmatik,   4  Bde. 

Leipzig,  1854-67. 
Garvie,  Alfred.    The  Ritschlian  Theology,  2nd  ed.    Edinburgh,  1902. 
Herrmann,  W.     Der  evangelische  Glaube  und  die  Theologie  Albrecht 

Ritschls.     Marburg,  1896. 
Pfleiderer,    Otto.     Die    Ritschlsche    Theologie    kritisch    beleuchtet. 

Braunschweig,  1891. 
Kaftan,  Julius.     Dogmatik.     Tubingen,  4.  Aufl.,  1901. 
Stevens,   George  B.     The    Christian  Doctrine  of  Salvation.     New 

York,  1905. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  245 


CHAPTER  IV 

Carpenter,  J.  Estlin.    The  Bible  in  the  Nineteenth  Century.    London, 

1903. 
Gardner,  Percy.     A  Historic  View  of  the  New  Testament.     London, 

190L 
JiJLicHER,   Adolf.     Einleitung  in  das   Neue   Testament.     Freiburg, 

6.  Aufl.  1906.     Transl.,  Miss  Janet  Ward.     1904. 
Moore,  Edward   Caldwell.     The  New  Testament  in  the  Christian 

Church.     New  York,  1904. 
Lietzmann,  Hans.     Wie  wurden  die  Bilcher  des  neuen  Testaments  heilige 

Schrift?   ,Tiibingen,  1907. 
LoisT,  A.    L'JSvangile  et  VEglise.    Paris,  2nd  ed.,  1903.    Transl.,  London, 

1904. 
Wernle,  Paul.     Die  Anfdnge  unserer  Religion.     Tiibingen,  1901. 
Schweitzer,  Albert.     Von  Reimarus  zu  Wrede,  eine  Geschichte  der 

Leben-Jesu-Forschung.     Tiibingen,  1906. 
Sanday,  William.     The  Life  of  Christ  in  Recent  Research.     Oxford, 

1907. 
HoLTZMANN,   OsKAR.      Ncu-TestamentUche   Zeitgeschichte.      Freiburg, 

2.  Aufl.,  1906. 
Driver,  Samuel  R.     Introduction  to  the  Literature  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment.    Edinburgh,  2nd  ed.,  1909. 
Wellhausen,  Julius.     Frolegomena  zur  Geschichte  Israels.    Berlin, 

5.  Aufl.,  1899. 
BuDDE,  Karl.     The  Religion  of  Israel  to  the  Exile.     New  York,  1899. 
Kautsch,  E.     Abriss  der  Geschichte  des  alt-testamentlichen  Schriftthums 

in  seiner  *  Heilige  Schrift  des  Alten  Testaments.'     Freiburg,  1894. 

Transl.,   J.   J.    Taylor,    and    published  separately,   New  York, 

1899. 
Smith,  W.  Robertson.     The   Old   Testament  in  the  Jewish  Church. 

Glasgow,  2nd  ed.,  1892.     The  Prophets  of  Israel,  2nd  ed.,  1892. 


CHAPTER  V 

Merz,  John.     A   History   of  European   Thought  in  the  Nineteenth 

Century.     Vols.  1  and  2,  Edinburgh,  1904  and  1903. 
White,  Andrew  D.     The  History  of  the    Warfare   of  Science  with 

Theology  in  Christendom..     2  vols.     New  York,  1896. 
Otto,  Rudolf.     Naturalistische  und  religiose  Weltansicht.     Tubingen, 

2.  Aufl,  1909. 
Ward,  James.     Naturalism  and  Agnosticism.     2  vols.    London,  1899. 
Flint,  Robert.     Agnosticism.     Edinburgh,  1903. 
TuLLocH,    John.      Modern    Theories    in    Philosophy    and    Religion. 

Edinburgh,  1884. 
Martineau,  James.     Essays,  Reviews  and  Addresses.    Vols.  1  and  3 

London,  1890. 


246        HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT 

BouTROux,  Emile.     Science  et   Religion  dans  la  Philonophie  contem- 

poraine.     Paris,  1908.     Transl.,  Nield.     London,  1909. 
Flint,  Robert.     Socialism.    London,  1895. 

Peabody,  Francis  G.     Jes^is  Christ  and  the  Social  Question.     New 
York,  1905. 

CHAPTER  VI 

Hunt,   John.      Religious    Thought    in  England    in    the    Nineteenth 

Century.     London,  1896. 
TuLLOCH,  John.     Movements  of  Religious  Thought  in  Britain  during 

the  Nineteenth  Century.     London,  1885. 
Benn,  Alfred  William.     The  History  of  English  Rationalism  in  the 

Nineteenth  Century.     2  vols.     London,  1906. 
HuTTON,  Richard  H.     Essays  on  some  of  the  Modern  Guides  to  Eng- 
lish Thought  in  Matters  of  Faith.     London,  1900. 
Mellone,  Sidney  H.     Leaders  of  Religious  Thought  in  the  Nineteenth 

Century.    Edinburgh,  1902. 
Brooke,    Stopford   A.      Theology  in    the   English  Poets.      London, 

1896. 
Scddder,  Vida  D.     The  Life  of  the  Spirit  in  the  Modern  English 

Poets.     Boston,  1899. 
Church,  R.  W.     The  Oxford  Movement:    Twelve  Years,  1833-1845. 

London,  1904. 
Fairbairn,  Andrew  M.    Catholicism,  Roman  and  Anglican.     New 

York,  1899. 
Ward,  Wilfrid.     Life  and  Times  of  Cardinal   Wiseman.    2  vols. 

5th  ed.     London,  1900. 
Ward,  Wilfrid.     Life  of  John  Henry,  Cardinal  Newman.     2  vols. 

London,  1912. 
DoLLiNQER,  J.  J.  Ignaz  VON.     Das  Papstthum :  Neuhearheitung  von 

Janus :  Der  Papst  und  das  Condi,  von  J.  Friedrich.     Miinchen, 

1892. 
Gout,  Raoul.     L' Affaire  Tyrrell.     Paris,  1910. 
Sabatier,  Paul.     Modernism.     TransL,  Miles.     New  York,  1908. 
Stanley,  Arthur  P.     The  Life  and  Correspondence  of  Thomas  Arnold. 

2  vols.     London,  13th  ed.,  1882. 
Brooke,  Stopford  A.     Life  and  Letters  of  Frederick  W.  Robertson. 

2  vols.     London,  1891. 
Abbott,  Evelyn  and  Campbell,  Lewis.    Life  and  Letters  of  Benjamin 

Jowett.     2  vols.     London,  1897. 
Drummond,  James,  and  Upton,  C.  B.     Life   and  Letters  of  James 

Martineau.     2  vols.     London,  1902. 
Allen,   Alexander  V.    G.      Life  and  Letters  of  Phillips  BrooJcs. 

2  vols.     New  York,  1900. 
MuNGER,  Theodore  T.     Horace  Bushnell,  Preacher  and  Theologian. 

Boston,  1899. 


INDEX 


Abelard,  Jesus,  death  of,  106. 
Agnosticism,  152,  162,  164. 
America,  22,  205. 

Anselm,  satisfaction,  doctrine  of,  105. 
Arnold,  M.,  196,  232. 

T.,  199,  200. 

Athanasius,  146. 

Atonement  and  reconciliation,  108. 

Baur,  118 ;  as  historian,  136 ;  the 
fourth  Gospel,  121 ;  New  Testament, 
view  of  the,  121  ;  Paul,  120. 

Blake,  William,  195. 

Broad  Church,  the,  224. 

Brooks,  Phillips,  224,      . 

Browning,  196. 

Budde,  132. 

Burns,  195. 

Bushnell,  208 ;  atonement  209 ;  divinity 
of  Christ,  209 ;  revivalism,  208 ;  theory 
of  language,  209. 

Butler,  Analogy y  193. 

Byron,  196. 

Caird,  E.,  237. 

J.,  237. 

Calvinism,  201,  206,  208. 

Campbell,  J.  M.,  201,  203. 

Canon  of  the  Old  Testament,  132 ;  of 

the  New  Testament,  123. 
Cariyle,  228. 

Catholic  Revival,  the,  211. 
Cause,  idea  of,  168. 
Channing  205. 
Clough,  A.  H.,  196. 
Coleuso,  227. 
Coleridge,  16,  197 ;  his  philosophy,  197  ; 

the  Scriptures,  199. 


Comte,  17,  156  ;  authority,  idea  of,  161 ; 
humanity,  worship  of,  160  ;  immor- 
tality, 162;  materialism,  158,  160; 
philosophy,  160;  religion,  162; 
social  progress,  laws  of,  158 ;  the 
three  stages,  159. 

Cowper,  195. 

Criticism,  biblical,  4,  12,  16,  113. 

Darwin,  13,  154. 

Deism,  23. 

Doctrine,  7  ;  history  of,  136. 

Dogma,  7. 

Dollinger,  222. 

Drummond,  Henry,  174. 

Dualism,  64. 

Election,  dogma  of,  105. 

Emerson,  230. 

Energy,  conservation  of,  171. 

England,  21. 

Erskine,  Thomas,  201. 

Eucken,  186. 

Evangelicals,  the,  194. 

Evolution,  167,  170,  172 ;  social,  173. 

Essays  and  Reviews,  225. 

Fairbairn,  a.  M.,  186,  220,  236. 
Fichte,  56  ;  atheism,  58  j  idealism,  57  ; 

monism,  59. 
Force,  166. 
France,  19. 

Fremantle,  W.  H.,  73,  186. 
Froude,  R.  H.,  215. 

Gardner,  Pkucy,  177. 
Germany,  20. 
Goethe,  37. 

247 


248     HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT 


Great  Britain,  191. 

Green,  T.  H.,  237. 

Grotius,  satisfaction,  doctrine  of,  106. 

Guilt,  inherited,  104. 

Hampden,  R.D.,  200. 

Harnack,  140  ;  Christianity,  spread  of, 
138,  transformation  of,  139 ;  church 
organisation,  142  ;  doctrine,  history 
of,  141 ;  Jesus,  the  gospel  of,  143 ; 
New  Testament  canon,  126,  142 ; 
trinity,  doctrine  of  the,  145. 

Harvard  College,  205,  209,  231. 

Hatch,  Edwin,  143. 

Hedonism,  47. 

Hegel,    66;    antithesis,    law    of,    68 
Church,  the,  72  ;  intellectualism,  74 
Jesus,    70 ;    pre-eiistence,  the,   70 
redemption,  72  ;  the  world  as  object 
of,  72 ;  trinity,  67. 

Herder,  35. 

Herrmann,  100 ;  Jesus,  inner  life  of, 
101 ;  virgin  birth,  101 ;  revelation, 
historical  facts  of,  102. 

History,  9,  29. 

HoflFman,  88. 

Holtzmann,  Oscar,  129. 

Huxley,  167,  169;  moral  progress, 
174. 

Idealism,  aesthetic,  33. 
Individual,  question  of  the,  187. 
Infallibility,  222. 

Israel,  history  of,  133 ;  literature  of, 
134. 

James,  William,  238. 

Jansenism,  31. 

Jesuits,  the,  19. 

Jesus,   early  Christian  view  of,   147; 

life  of,  127. 
Jowett,  B.,  225. 

Kaftan,  justification,  107;  redemp- 
tion, 106 ;  sin,  102. 

Kant,  12,  25,  39  ;  argument,  the  moral, 
52 ;  atonement,  55 ;  dualism,  48 ; 
evil,  radical,  49 ;  freedom,   49,   61 ; 


idea  of  God,  51  ;  idealism,  42 ; 
immanence,  53 ;  immortality,  51 ; 
imperative,  the  categorical,  49 ; 
Jesus,  54  ;  knowledge,  theory  of,  46  ; 
morality  and  religion,  49,  74  ;  philo- 
sophy, critical,  40 ;  reason,  the 
practical,  the  pure,  42 ;  revelation, 
50 ;  sacrifice,  vicarious,  55 ;  salva- 
tion, 54  ;  scepticism,  56  ;  world,  the 
transcendental,  42. 

Keble,  214. 

Kenosis,  the,  89. 

Kidd,  B,,  174. 

Le  Maistre,  211. 
Lessing,  50. 
Lipsius,  88. 
Locke,  193,  197. 
Lotze,  90. 

Mackintosh,  177. 
Mansel,  237. 
Martineau,  H.,  156,285. 

J.,  158,  234;   authority,  the  idea 

of,  235  ;  spiritual  philosophy,  236. 
Materialism,  158,  160. 
Maurice,  F.  D.,204. 
Mechanism,  172. 
Methodism,  31. 
Miracles,  the,  175. 
Modernism,  221. 
Monism,  47. 
Moravians,  32. 

Naturalism,  162. 

Natural  sciences,  the,  151. 

Neander,  137. 

Neoplatonists,  70. 

Newman,  J.  H.,  21,  214;    authority, 

217 ;  Catholicism,  219  ;  Church,  the, 

218  ;    experience,   doctrine  of,  218 ; 

scepticism,  218. 
New    Testament,    criticism    of    the, 

113. 
Nicene  Creed,  the,  146. 

Oriel  School,  the,  21,  200. 
Oxford  movement,  the,  21,  212. 


INDEX 


249 


Old  Testament  canon,  130 ;  criticism, 
130. 

Pfleiderer,  88,  116,  128,  192,  201. 

Philosophy,  4,  9,  15,  29 ;  idealistic,  39. 

Pietism,  30. 

Poets,  the  English,  192. 

Positivism,  152,  156. 

Priestley,  18. 

Pringle-Pattison,  238. 

Progress,  idea  of,  188. 

Punishment,  108. 

Pusey,  215. 

Rationalism,  8,  15,  26,  34. 

Reaction,  19,  211. 

Reformation,  the,  1, 

Religion,  history  of,  153 ;  philosophy 
of,  153  ;  psychology  of,  239. 

Renaissance,  2. 

Renan,  Jesus,  life  of,  127. 

Revelation  and  reason,  110. 

Reville,  129. 

Ritgchl,  89 ;  empiricism,  94  ;  justifica- 
tion, 94;  knowledge,  theory  of,  90 
metaphysics,      98 ;      method,      95 
mysticism,    98 ;    reconciliation,    94 
redemption,    93 ;    revelation,    100 
salvation,   social    interpretation   of, 
95 ;   scripture,   97  ;  sin,  104  ;  value 
judgments,  90  ;  work  of  Christ,  92. 

Robertson,  F.  W.,  223. 

Roman  Church  in  England,  214. 

Rothe,  89. 

Rousseau,  48. 

ScHBLLiNG,  60  ;   monism,  63  ;  nature, 

philosophy  of,  61. 
Schleiermacher,    74 ;     youth    of,    33 ; 

Christ,  place  of,  81,  82 ;  Church,  the, 


81 ;  Discourses,  the,  76  ;  ethics,  basis 
of,  79 ;  feeling,  religion  of,  75 ; 
immortality,  79  ;  Jesus,  84  ;  sinless- 
ness  of,  85  ;  miracles,  87  ;  pantheism, 
78;  salvation  83;  Scripture,  86; 
sin,  84. 

Sciences,  natural,  5,  13,  17,  28 ;  social, 
152,  183. 

Scripture,  45. 

Seeley,  J.  R.,  186. 

Shelley,  196. 

Siebeck,  190. 

Sin,  doctrine  of,  103. 

Socialism,  155. 

Social  questions,  185. 

Spencer,  H. ,  17, 162  ;  absolute,  the,  166 ; 
evolution,  167,  171 ;  God,  knowable- 
ness  of,  166. 

Spinoza,  80. 

Strauss,  114,  115. 

Tennyson,  196, 

Thought,  Christian,  5. 

Tracts  for  the  Times,  216. 

Troeltsch,  27. 

Tubingen  School,  the,  118,  123. 

Ullmann,  117. 

Unitarianism,  18,  206,  235 ;  American, 
206,  210. 

Vatkb,  131. 

Weizsacker,  138. 
Wellhausen,  133. 
Wesley,  J.,  194. 
Wmiams,  Rowland,  226. 
Wordsworth,  195. 

Yalk  Colleqb,  208,  209. 


Studies  in  Theology 

A  New  Series  of  Hand-books,  being  aids  to  interpretation 

in    Biblical   Criticism   for   the    use    of    Ministers, 

Theological  Students  and  general  readers. 


12mo,  cloth.      75  cents  net  per  vQlume. 

THE  aim  of  the  series  is  described  by  the  general  title. 
It  is  an  attempt  to  bring  all  the  resources  of  modern 
learning  to  the  interpretation  of  the  Scriptures,  and 
to  place  within  the  reach  of  all  who  are  interested 
the  broad  conclusions  arrived  at  by  men  of  distinction  in  the 
world  of  Christian  scholarship  on  the  great  problems  of  Faith 
and  Destiny.  The  volumes  are  critical  and  constructive,  and 
their  value  can  scarcely  be  overstated.  Each  volume  will 
contain  bibliographies  for  the  guidance  of  those  who  wish  to 
pursue  more  extended  studies. 

The  writers  selected  for  the  various  volumes  are  represen- 
tative scholars  both  in  this  country  and  in  Europe.  Each  of 
them  has  been  assigned  a  subject  with  which  he  is  particularly 
qualified  to  deal,  as  will  be  at  once  apparent  even  in  this 
preliminary  announcement  giving  a  list  of  some  of  the  vol- 
umes in  preparation. 

ARRANGEMENT  OF   VOLUMES 

A  CRITICAL  INTRODUCTION  TO  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT. 

By  Arthur  Samuel  Peake,  D.D.,  Professor  of  Biblical  Exegesis 
and  Dean  of  the  Faculty  of  Theology,  Victoria  University,  Man- 
chester. Sometime  Fellow  of  Merton  College,  Oxford.  Author  of 
"A  Guide  to  Biblical  Study,"  "The  Problem  of  Suffering  in  the 
Old  Testament,"  etc.  [Ready. 

FAITH  AND  ITS  PSYCHOLOGY.  By  the  Rev.  William  R  Inge, 
D.D.,  Lady  Margaret  Professor  of  Divinity,  Cambridge,  and 
Bampton  Lecturer,  Oxford,  1899.  Author  of  "Studies  of  the 
English  Mystics,"  "  Truth  and  Falsehood  in  Religion,"  "  Personal 
Idealism  and  Mysticism,"  etc.  [Reody. 

PHILOSOPHY  AND  RELIGION.  By  the  Rev.  Hastings  Rash- 
DALL,  D.Litt.  (Oxon.),  D.C.L.  (Dunelm),  F.B.A.  Fellow  and 
Tutor  of  New  College,  Oxford.  Author  of  "The  Theory  of  Good 
and  Evil,"  etc.,  etc.  [Reedy. 


REVELATION  AND  INSPIRATION.  By  the  Rev.  James  Orr, 
D.D.,  Professor  of  Apologetics  in  the  Theological  College  of  the 
United  Free  Church,  Glasgow.  Author  of  "The  Christian  View 
of  God  and  the  World,"  "The  Ritschlian  Theology  and  Evangelical 
Faith,"  "The  Problem  of  the  Old  Testament,"  etc.  [Ready. 

CHRISTIANITY  AND  SOCIAL  QUESTIONS.  By  the  Rev.  Will- 
iam Cunningham,  D.D.,  F.B.A.,  Fellow  of  Trinity  College,  Cam- 
bridge. Hon.  Fellow  of  Gonville  and  Caius  College,  Cambridge. 
Archdeacon  of  Ely.  Formerly  Lecturer  on  Economic  History  to 
Harvard  University.  Author  of  "Growth  of  English  History  and 
Commerce,"  etc.  [Ready, 

CHRISTIAN    THOUGHT    TO    THE    REFORMATION.      By 

Herbert  B.  Workman,  D.Litt.,  Principal  of  the  Westminster  Train- 
ing College.  Author  of  "The  Church  of  the  West  in  the  Middle 
Ages,"  "The  Dawn  of  the  Reformation,"  etc.  [Ready. 

PROTESTANT    THOUGHT    BEFORE     KANT.       By    A.    C. 

McGiFFERT,  Ph.D.,  D.D.,  Professor  of  Church  History  in  the 
Union  Theological  Seminary,  New  York.  Author  of  "The  His- 
tory of  Christianity  in  the  Apostolic  Age"  and  "The  Apostles' 
Creed."  [Ready. 

THE  CHRISTIAN  HOPE:  A  STUDY  IN  THE  DOCTRINE 
OF  IMMORTALITY.    By  William  Adams  Brown,  Ph.D.,  D.D., 

Professor  of  Systematic  Theology  in  the  Union  Theological  Semi- 
nary, New  York.  Author  of  "The  Essence  of  Christianity"  and 
"  Christian  Theology  in  Outline."  [Ready. 

A  CRITICAL  INTRODUCTION  TO  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT. 

By  the  Rev.  George  Buchanan  Gray,  D.D.,  D.Litt.,  Professor 
of  Hebrew  and  Old  Testament  Exegesis,  Mansfield  College,  Oxford. 
Author  of  "The  Divine  Discipline  of  Israel,"  "Studies  in  Hebrew 
Proper  Names,"  etc. 

HISTORY  OF  CHRISTIAN  THOUGHT  SINCE  KANT.     By  the 

Rev.  Edward  Caldwell  Moore,  D.D.,  Parkman  Professor  of 
Theology  in  Harvard  University.  Author  of  "The  New  Testa- 
ment in  the  Christian  Church,"  etc.  [Ready. 

Other  volumes  are  in  preparation  and  will  be  announced  later. 


CHARLES    SCRIBNER'S    SONS 
153-157  Fifth  Avenue      -      -    -      New  York 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW 


AN  INITIAL  FINE  OF  25  CENTS 

WILL  BE  ASSESSED  FOR  FAILURE  TO  RETURN 
THIS  BOOK  ON  THE  DATE  DUE.  THE  PENALTY 
WILL  INCREASE  TO  50  CENTS  ON  THE  FOURTH 
DAY  AND  TO  $1.00  ON  THE  SEVENTH  DAY 
OVERDUE. 


MAY  11  1934 


^^9  30  1^36 


KEC'D  LD 


JGAfarsg^ 


'mrwrmi 


*f^      i      T-\ 


— "  ^/. 


' l4Jur63ZFg 


i£E 1    im 


^i- 


F^ 


r-^ 


V  « «*^T^ 


MA-     1.  ■}  ^i^.ifl 


m 


xx^ 


r.  peP^ 


t£B24^abi  35 


«£a  C*     OCT  2  7  76 


VXr 


\m  '^'^  ' 


^ 


isesi 


-^ Tf- 


LD  21-100m-7.'33 


/ 


34800:5 


'!  »   . 


